


Here's to the Losers

by moon_crater



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Benny + Karma: my favorite kind of math, Canon-Typical Problematic Language, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abandonment, Community: falloutkinkmeme, F/M, Found Family, Kid in Peril, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7595617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_crater/pseuds/moon_crater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fate decides Benny needs to acquire four-feet-ten inches of mouthy sidekick. Benny disagrees. Too bad he's got no say in the matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ...here's the last toast of the evening...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [robberreynard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robberreynard/gifts).



> For the kinkmeme. The original prompt is as follows, shortened for space:
> 
> _[I'm] hankering for the 'con man dad' angle something fierce. [..] although we've seen fills and fics where the Courier has some long lost child, I'd like to see it with ol Ben Man for once. Hey, you know he calls himself Daddy whenever he gets the chance, he just didn't know how right he was._
> 
> _*Bonus*_  
>  _-It's set after Benny gets booted from Vegas/Courier takes over_  
>  _-Preferably younger than a teenager (smart mouthed Wasteland kids are my one love)_  
>  _-The kid can be the product of a one night stand, a long, torrid love affair, Benny's one love that he let go, the kid of someone he knocked up in his old gang, but I would kill to have them be the Courier's. How they both got in that state is up to the author._
> 
> I skewed a bit off center from the prompt because it grabbed me and wouldn't let go: a foundling child rather than Benny's biological offspring. The “con man dad in over his head” angle is there, it's post game, and the kid isn't a teen. There'll also be some Benny/Courier eventually in the mix and a Benny-Courier-Kid family vibe down the line. And...possibly a horrible streak of twisty angst before the happily ever after, if I can't control myself. OH GOD.

Goddamn, he needs a drink.

Benny tugs his boots off to let his blisters breathe. Leans back against the rock face and stretches until something pops low in his back.

Either old lady Mojave's gotten meaner, or he's gone too soft to tame her like she deserves. The latter, if he's feeling frank enough about it. Seven years on the strip's worn all his callouses down and added a couple inches of soft to his middle.

At least the callouses will grow back, he thinks, shaking sand out of one boot. The pudge will take care of itself when food gets scarce enough. A little hunger won't kill him. Might make him cranky for awhile, but Mojave would provide. Always did. She'd just punish him a little bit first.

He dumps the other boot and then, much sooner than he wants to, starts tugging them back on. They pinch, bein' maybe half a size too small, but he took 'em off a dead prospector all swelled up and purple with cazador venom. Not like he could complain to the management about the fit. They're better than wingtips, anyhow. Better than a lot of things he's been through lately, but it's best not to think about that. That way lies self pity; no time for that shit.

The sun is hanging low in the sky, promising a picture-book sunset all painted in golds and sagebrush purples, and while his feet feel like they've been under him for about a year, the day's gone by too fast. Benny's sense of time is a trifle sideways now. Vegas hours _crawled_ by, even when they were poured full of pleasurable distractions. Desert hours are filled by nothing but heat and dust and thirst, but sunrise to sunset fits in the blink of an eye, and there's never enough time to get where he's going before darkness falls. Always getting sidetracked by this raider or that radscorpion, or having to pause long enough to rifle through all the debris he finds and pluck out any useful items, and the endless stopping to grab every edible weed that finds its way under his boots.

All day long it's fits and starts, fits and starts, and they gobble up minutes by the fistful.

What's he got to show for it? A few caps liberated from a Great Khan's corpse. Enough bulletholed, mismatched armor to keep him dry in any rain less ambitious than a drizzle, which is about right for the desert, but not real helpful for keeping off the sun and rads. A few sticks of dynamite and a couple of guns. A pair of too-tight boots that are wearing the backs of his ankles raw. It ain't a whole hell of a lot.

It won't always be like this. At most it'll take a couple of months of scavenging and odd jobs to be really well supplied, but he's impatient. He shouldn't be. He's expecting too much, too fast from his mother desert, and if given form, she'd wring her hands and call him an ungrateful son. She wouldn't be wrong. The Strip has spoiled him. Given him expectations about having everything he wants at a snap of his fingers, _now, now, now_.

While he's resting, he pulls the cowboy repeater from his back to give it a once over. It's not his weapon of choice, but it never hurts to have something with decent range, even if he does have to scrub the sand off it every few hours to make sure it don't lock up on him. Centuries old mechanical things get real touchy in the desert.

He'd do better with something he could use one-handed, though. It's hard to grip anything with his left, thanks to a couple of injuries that are healing up slower than he'd like. Might be infection setting in to that cut, he doesn't really have the skills to be sure, and the only thing he knows how to make that would help takes xander root, which he hasn't been able to find.

But—he fishes around in his pack for a few more bullets to replace what he's already spent—beggars, choosers. Whatever. He'll find some healing, or he won't. He'll lose that hand, or he won't. Even under the best conditions with the best supplies, it still might not be up to him. Chance is a son of a bitch that way.

When he's done with the repeater, Benny drags himself to his feet. He scans the horizon to get his bearings and picks out a point in the distance that he guesses is the direction he started from. He's a week or two out of Caesar's camp by now, torture a distant enough memory that he's not feeling his bruises so sharply anymore, but not so distant he doesn't still wake up in a cold sweat about it sometimes. He's north, too, farther north than he's been in years. Probably pushing up into central Nevada.

There's maybe an hour of daylight left, but there are a few little pockets of civilization dotting the middle of the territory that he knows about, if they're still there. He might get lucky enough to hit one tonight. Even if he doesn't, it's too open here to stop for the night and sleep.

So, aching back, weeping blisters and all, he presses on.

* * *

An hour later, minutes after the sun finally drops over the edge of the world, Benny falls in a hole. Or, to be more accurate, a too-soft patch of desert yawns open under his feet and _swallows him_. He hits the bedrock underneath on his feet and something _splinter_ _s_ in his left leg. Always a good sign. A cloud of sand chokes the air after he loses his balance and lands on his back.

For a minute, he lies there. Stares at the stars, being quietly grateful none of his firearms or explosives went off. Blowing himself to smithereens ain't high up on his priorities list. The pain in his shin bone is a hot needle jammed in sideways, but at least he's not in pieces.

Fucking sinkholes. The best thing he can say about them is that they're not full of radscorpions. Usually. Sometimes they are. A lot of times they are. But they haven't swarmed over him yet, so there probably aren't any in this one.

He needs to get up. He needs to move. So he does. He does it without thinking about how much he would rather just lie still. Because if he thinks about it, he'll stay there, whining to himself about his nice soft bed back at the Tops, and the cold booze and good company that would keep him out of it until all hours. He ain't a guy who appreciates what he has until it's gone, he knows that about himself. It's what keeps him always playing for higher stakes, always reaching for something more.

The only thing he can reach for now is the top of this goddamn hole.

He's down maybe eight feet, not so far that he's ready to give up and die, just far enough that he knows he'd have a hard time jumping it even at his best. It should be an easy climb, there are enough foot-and hand-holds in the rock wall, but one quick trial is enough to convince him not to. He can put some weight on his left leg, but not that much.

So what is there to do? Wait around for someone to come along and help him out? It's true somebody _might_ wander by before his supplies run out, but he doesn't like the odds. So the only other choice is to look around for some other way out. It's already getting too dark to see much, but that's all the more reason not to stop. Dark, in the desert, means _cold_. That'd be bad enough above ground—a real pain in the ass to get through, but survivable. Down here it'll be worse. If the temperature dips low enough, there's a chance he might not see morning. Don't get him wrong: tonight's sunset was real pretty, but he doesn't want it to be the _last one he ever sees._

Benny presses up against the wall of the sinkhole and starts feeling around. He creeps along the surface inch by inch with his nose close enough he can catch that dust-dry smell of sand, dragging his bum leg and groping for anything useful in the firm, rocky earth beneath his fingers. A root that might hold his weight, better footholds, an entrance to a fire ant burrow. Something. There's _got_ to be something. He refuses to die in a hole _._

After a few minutes of limping, he's made it to what he _thinks_ is the other side of the sinkhole. It's hard to be sure in the almost-dark, with only pale starlight leaking in from overhead; his sense of direction and equilibrium are all shot to hell down here. After a whole lot of nothing, his hands come across a dip in the wall that turns out to be a crack. A pretty wide one, maybe wide enough for a person to fit through.

He can feel air coming through it—cool, dry—almost like the recirculated air in the Tops. It's gotta lead somewhere, even if he can't see where. Can't be worse than staying where he is, anyway.

He pushes his gun through first, then his pack, twisting in sideways after it, feels it snag on the rock and then pop free into a bigger space beyond. And he loses his grip on it. Shit. Well, now he has no choice but to go after it. Okay. It's tight, but he's been in tighter spots than this.

Not...recently, he remembers when he reaches a point where he can't go any farther forward. A spar of rock digging into his chest, another one jabbing him in the spine, he can't quite take a full breath, but he doesn't panic yet. He just has to go back the way he came, just take it easy and slide right back out, except—he can't.

He's stuck.

Without thinking, he throws his head back. Knocks it on the wall behind him a little harder than he means to. A couple of small rocks shake loose and rain down on his face. Not big enough to really do any damage, but he's left spitting sand and shaking his head to try and get debris out of his eyes.

Benny squirms some, really working to twist enough to squeeze past the rock vise squeezing him. Nothing much happens. There's new pressure in fun, _different_ places on his body and it's harder to breathe, but that's about it. He's not sure he didn't make it worse.

In fact...he attempts a squirm in the other direction and finds the rock spar is now stabbing him like a fishhook that'll rip him open if he tries going back the way he came. Yeah. He did. He made it so much worse. If he wants to keep his guts inside him where they belong, the only way to go is forward.

Okay. He stops moving and takes the deepest breath he can with his lungs compressed. Tries real hard not to start losing his shit. Turns out there are worse thing than being stranded at the bottom of a sinkhole. Not surprising. Now, what to do about it?

For a few minutes, he just hangs there, held up by the walls. He focuses on evening out his breathing, because panic is a killer in situations like this one. Hyperventilation on top of already shallow breaths means getting lightheaded, and getting lightheaded means getting _stupid_.

Once he's got that under control, and is sure he's got enough energy to try for it, Benny blows out every bit of air he's got. He hollows out his lungs. Sucks in his gut so hard he's pretty sure his belly button's touching his spine. Makes his body as small as he can by shifting his shoulders so his chest's all caved in. Still holding his breath, he heaves his body toward the chamber behind the wall, throwing all the weight he can behind it.

For the longest few seconds of his life, he doesn't think it's going to work. A bleakly clear picture paints itself in his head—a possible future, his skeleton crammed into this crack until an earthquake shakes it loose or a deathclaw finds it and uses one of his femurs for a toothpick. But then he feels motion, feels his sweat-slick body slide under his clothes against the wall. Not much, but it'll do. The tight packed dirt and stone doesn't have a whole lot of give, but there's just enough for him to finally pop free.

Benny staggers in the dark and falls against the nearest wall. Careful of his injured leg, he slides down to the ground and breathes deep. Thank fucking _god_.

“Not today, baby,” he wheezes in the direction of the crack. “Not to-fuckin'-day.”

It sounds real impressive, but when he hears a faint skittering sound, like claws on stone, on the other side of that damn crack, he lets out the same kind of noise he used to make as a kid when his mom told him ghost stories in the dark. He finds his gear, somehow—can't see a damn thing now—and moves out as slow and careful as he can, feeling his way. He didn't get out of one scrape just to bash his head in on a rock or something. But he's not staying there with whatever it is behind him.

He half-crawls his way forward, trailing his hand across stone, until all of a sudden his fingers find a seam, and then what feels like cold steel. He runs his fingertips over it, back and forth, finding strange little grooves near the ground that feel like...letters? Benny fumbles around in his pockets for the lighter he found on a corpse somewhere. After a few tries with the spark wheel grinding rustily at him, he gets it burning. It's just a tiny little flame, hardly enough to see a couple feet in front of his face, and he'd better use it sparingly 'cause it's almost out of fuel, but he peers at the steel under his hand.

_BUILT BY VAULT TEC_

_Model No. 1DF8-9XG6-P35_

There's a lot of smaller letters underneath, but they're so caked with dirt he can't make out what they say.

Vault Tec. There's a Vault entrance here. Somewhere. Time or—he swallows harshly—something that burrows has eroded the rock around it and left him this little space. Or maybe it's an old access tunnel leftover from construction.

Benny lifts the lighter higher and squints into the darkness. Visibility ain't too great with the dinky thing, but if he had to guess, he'd say this little...cave...room thingy goes on for awhile. If he keeps to the Vault wall, he's likely to find a way in eventually. Hopefully. Lots of them have secret back ways in. He makes a point not to think about how most _don't_ , and clings to his optimism.

After a long moment of staring down the length of this little corridor of steel and rock, Benny lifts his finger from the push button and lets the flame go out.

* * *

It's easy to lose track of time in the dark. Minutes stretch and compress, depending, until he's got no idea if it's been ten minutes or an hour. It's disconcerting.

Benny moves achingly slow, feeling ahead of himself with a foot, sliding his hand along the wall over the strange bumps of bolts and seams and soldering scars. His hearing's sharpened to compensate for his blindness, but that soon feels more like a curse than a blessing. Pebbles skittering under his feet start to sound like hissing, scuttling insects. The low drone of running water somewhere behind the rock wall is warped by the corridor's acoustics until it sounds like clunky, grinding machinery.

Those minutes of blind groping seem like hours.

Every once in awhile the ground slopes or dips without warning and he takes a sour step that wants to send him tumbling. That's when time speeds up, while he pinwheels his arms trying to keep his balance as gravity works out the grudge it's got for him.

He hits the lighter twice more, just for a second, just to make sure there's nothing waiting for him in the dark. The third time, it won't catch, and he can't tell if it's because he's out of lighter fluid or because his fingers, slowly going numb in the cold, are just too clumsy to work it. He tucks it away in a pocket in case it's the latter, and pushes forward. It can't be much farther. It just _can't_ be.

* * *

Another hour ticks by. At least, Benny thinks it's an hour. Probably less. It feels like more. The cave is getting damp around him, and the air is feeling frosty and moist. He's shivering by now, regretting every time he ever bellyached about the heat of the desert sun. He's unsteady on his feet, too, and his thinking's getting foggy. That's a stack of symptoms that don't add up to anything good.

If he's managed to get fucking hypothermia in the _fucking Mojave desert_ , he's going to die laughing.

Right when he starts getting used to the idea of croaking in the most ironic way he can conceive, the cave decides it's time to mix it up and try to break his neck. Just to remind him who's boss. His foot finds a patch of something too smooth to be stone and too wet to have traction. It slides right out from under him and the rest of him follows suit. Benny's got enough time to think _“Sh—“_ before he starts rolling down the slope. He finds the rest of the letters and a couple _extra_ curse words on the way down.

He _slams_ into something solid. Of course. What was he gonna hit, a stack of pillows? No, it has to be rock, or steel, or something else hard enough to knock the breath out of him. But at least it's not somebody's knife collection.

And his neck isn't broken. Neither is his spine. Not even his ribs, he finds out when he manages to suck in a deep breath after a couple of seconds of trying to remember how. There'll be some bruises, but there's always bruises. He can keep going.

Grunting, straining, he sits up. Then he leans up against the thing he rolled into to rest. Getting the crap kicked out of him by the universe at large really takes it out of a guy.

It's wood, this solid whatever-it-is behind him. That's a switch. It's even got some give when he puts his weight on it—he's sort of surprised it didn't splinter when he collided with it—and it feels...hollow.

It's—a door? It's a door! He starts laughing, and he doesn't die of it. As best he can with his busted leg and all his new scratches and sore spots, Benny scrambles to his feet. With almost-dead fingers he feels around on the wood for a handle. He can't quite grip it tight when he finds one, but he fumbles the door open somehow anyway.

On the other side is more corridor, but in the distance there's a faint yellow light. A literal light at the end of the tunnel. He laughs some more and starts limping toward it.

* * *

It occurs to him too late that a light in the darkness isn't necessarily something friendly. He could be running headlong into a nest of Vipers—if you could call it running. But his uneven footsteps and ragged breathing echo into the nothingness, and nothing answers back. He's alone.

The light, when he passes through a steel vault door that's jammed open halfway, turns out to be coming from a battered lamp rigged up to a fission battery. It could be brand new, or it could have been left there by some prospector years ago. Doesn't really matter. He's a lot more interested in the thing it's leaning up against.

He knows all about these from the scavving he used to do back in the old days. A _drinking fountain_ , they called it. People used to be able to just press a button, and they'd get all the water they could ever want. Even after all these years with indoor plumbing of his own, this is still a miracle to him.

He knows that all these old vaults had water purifiers in them. He also knows that most of those have failed over the last two hundred years, especially in the vaults that have been abandoned. But water is water, and dehydration kills a lot quicker than radiation poisoning, so he presses the button and drinks until he can't hold another drop. Then he fills up all the empty bottles he's been lugging around. Then he decides he can hold a few more drops after all, so he drinks again.

He's not feeling sick yet. Maybe the water's clean. More likely, he's just too exhausted to notice the effects. After all, if this place had purified water, it wouldn't be empty.

He doesn't want to leave the comforting circle of light—and if that's true, he really _has_ gone soft—but he knows he has to. He's so dead tired he could pass out on his feet, but doing it in the hallway could get him killed. He has no cover and no one to stand guard. There's no telling what could creep up on him in the night. Besides that, it's not much warmer in the vault than outside. He doesn't need light, he needs shelter. Blankets. Rags. Two vault suits torn into strips and knitted into a sweater. _Something._

The nearest door opens at his touch. Inside he finds rows of toilet stalls on either side of the door, sinks on the wall facing him, and a glimpse of communal showers through another room access off to the side. A bathroom. God, he'd like a shower. He always has enjoyed the feeling of being clean. But he's too tired. Maybe after he's rested, and after he's scouted the rest of the vault. He gives the showers a last longing look, and moves on.

The next door has a big plus sign on it, and he knows what that means: a clinic. He bursts in with visions of stimpaks, RadAway, and those bottles of water that doctors always seem to keep on hand. But it doesn't take long to dash his hopes. The place has been picked clean. Nothing in the first aid kits, nothing in the cabinets. There is one locked box, but when he manages to jimmy it open, he finds nothing but a bunch of empty syringes.

He comes up with a little more by feeling around on the highest shelves, where things are easier to miss. Some plastic tubing, a blunted scalpel, half a dose of Buffout, and finally, a single stimpak. It's better than he has a right to expect.

He has to think for a minute. One stimpak. Two injuries, not counting all the bumps and bruises that can be safely ignored. Should he fix his hand so he can shoot, or his leg so he can run? There's a lot he can't outfight, even with two good hands. Then again, there's a lot he can't outrun even with two good legs. It's a gamble either way. If the gash in his hand is infected, and he lets it go...he's seen people die from things like that, and it ain't pretty. On the other hand, if he keeps using his bum leg and makes the injury even worse, he could get stranded out in the desert, unable to move. And one thing he knows is that he's gotta keep moving forward, no matter what. So he sticks himself in the leg and hopes it's the right choice.

As his splintered shinbone knits back together, it sure as hell doesn't feel like the _wrong_ choice.

There are cots all around where the patients used to sleep. Most of them have been stripped bare like the rest of the room, but he comes up with a few blankets and an intact mattress and drags it all into the office at the back of the clinic, hardly limping at all. There's a desk with a working computer terminal on it, which might have something interesting on it, but at the moment it's just something heavy to put between his bed and the door, which makes a grinding sound but doesn't close when he presses the button. He takes the syringes he found and scatters them across the floor outside the office, along with a few empty tin cans. Not much will be able to get past that without him hearing. Then he shoves the desk over to block the open doorway. It's big, at least. Anything of a size to be dangerous will have to do a lot of sweating and straining if it wants to get through.

He should do more, he knows that, but he has no energy left to do it. He was past what he _thought_ was his limit somewhere around the crack in the sinkhole. Too tired even to choke down a can of cold CRAM, he rolls up in the blankets and falls asleep.


	2. ...here's to those who still believe...

His stomach wakes up twenty minutes earlier than Benny does. For awhile, hunger and sleep have him in a tug of war: the gnawing in his gut claws him toward consciousness, but exhaustion drags him back under.

Hunger finally wins out.

After a few false starts, he comes to, disoriented, with his face in a puddle of drool on the cot. It's that confused sideways kind of waking up, where his body expects to be vertical but he's on his belly staring at the wall instead and everything tilts when his eyes crack open. It makes his empty insides heave with nausea.

He needs to eat. It's been...maybe a full day, depending on how long he's slept, and he's overheated and sweating in his cocoon of blankets, even though the air on his face is still cool. Dehydration is _so_ not helping matters. That's got to be at least half of his nausea, and the fact his stomach's so empty it's trying to eat itself is the rest.

He does have food, but he's been doing everything he can to make it last, since he has no way of knowing when or where or _if_ he might find more. And rationing goes a lot easier when the only choices are CRAM or...CRAM.

Struggling into a seated position, Benny starts peeling off the layers of blanket. He's so sweaty they _stick,_ and he gets a real good whiff his own filthy body and armor as he pulls them back. _Yeach_. Out in the fresh air it's easy to forget he hasn't had a real good bath in awhile, and that his clothes are covered in bits of gore. Down here it's apparent he is _long_ overdue for a scrub down.

That bathroom is callin' his name. The showers in particular cooing sweet nothings about not smelling like a rotting brahmin carcass. Hey, he thinks brightly, wrestling free of the last of his covers. Maybe, if he scouts around inside and doesn't find anything that wants to tear his limbs off, he can risk it.

Okay, so he has a plan. Dig a can of CRAM out of his pack, pay another visit to that water fountain, make a stop at one of those toilets he saw. Then, search the immediate area for any threats or anything valuable that all the other scavengers might have missed, and _bathe._ Once he's feeling less disgusting, and hopefully in a new set of clothes, he can finish scouring the vault and be on his way.

He turns toward the doorway, his nose comes up even with the edge of the desk, and his gaze rests on a box of Dandy Boy Apples that wasn't there the night before.

His first thought is not the brightest: _Holy shit, there was a ghost in here._ Because nothing should have been able to get into the room without making enough noise to wake him up; even at his most exhausted, he's never slept _that_ soundly.

His second thought is a little clearer: _Holy_ _ **fucking Christ**_ _, something was_ _ **in**_ _here._ A shudder goes through him as the breath catches in his throat. But he hasn't been shot or stabbed or beaten over the head in his sleep. That would've been the first thing he noticed.

His third thought is simple enough that it should have been his first: _Food!_ Food that isn't potted meat. He wants to tear open the box and shovel it down his throat. But he's frozen in place. There's gotta be something wrong with it. Is it poisoned? Is it a _bomb_? He's not sure why an enemy ( _ghost_ , the back of his mind insists) would bother with something that complicated when it had him at its mercy, but why else would there be a box of candied apples an inch from his face?

Benny picks up his cowboy repeater, squashes himself against the wall farthest from the doorway and gives the box of apples a poke with the gun barrel. There's no explosion, no high velocity blob of applesauce to be the last thing he ever sees. After a few seconds, he pokes it a couple more times just to be sure. Then he sticks the barrel under the package's corner flap and gives it a little lift to check if there's a trip wire. All clear.

When he's reasonably sure it's not going to blow up in his face, Benny approaches the box and picks it up. Flips it open. Inside, there are little sugar glazed slices of apple, all in neat rows, still individually packaged in cellophane. He picks up one of the packs and looks over the wrapping, checking for holes that could have been made by a syringe. There's nothing visible to the naked eye, but that doesn't mean much.

Cautiously, he unwraps the apple slice in his hand. It smells normal. He touches it to the tip of his tongue. Tastes normal, too. Maybe there are pins stuck through it? He bites down as carefully as he can, ready to spit it out if he feels anything wrong, but it's just...apple. Coated in enough sugar to rot out all his teeth, but that's not exactly the most sinister thing he's ever had to handle. Caution and hunger go to war within him. Hunger insists it's _fine_ , it's safe, he needs to eat it all _right now_. Caution reminds him that if it's laced with cazador venom, he'll feel his tongue start to swell up in a minute, and one small bite won't do him any lasting harm, but any more than that might kill him. So he puts the fruit back in the wrapper and puts the wrapper back in the box, and gives himself some time to see what'll happen.

He stands up and looks out past the desk, to see if his cans and syringes are still there. They are, but some of them have been moved, carefully grouped together to leave a few empty spaces just big enough for someone to walk through on tiptoe.

Probably not a ghost, then.

And there's something sitting on the operating table. It's too dark to make out what it is, but he knows it's something that wasn't there before he passed out.

It could still be a bomb. But it probably isn't.

He drags the desk away from the door and picks up all his scattered junk. He'll dump it if he finds something better, but if he doesn't, at least he'll be able to trade it to some doctor for a patch job and an extra cap or two.

Then he moves on to the operating table, keeping the Dandy Boy box clutched tight under his arm. He can't see any tripwires or proximity mines. No snipers hidden in the shadowy corners to pick him off when he moves out into the open. Just an operating table with a metal tray lying across it. And on the tray—two stimpaks, a Vault-Tec lunchbox, and a bottle of whiskey.

The lunchbox rattles when he pokes at it, like it's full of sand and pebbles. And he can see the whiskey's been opened, but there can't be more than a sip gone. He pops the lid on the lunchbox and finds trail mix inside.

Benny frowns. Okay. Provided none of this stuff is full of poison or ground glass, this ghost wants to feed him, fix him up and get him drunk? This is not what happened in any of his mother's stories.

He tries to think. Maybe the apples were left alone just so he would let his guard down and eat poisoned trail mix. But then what are the stimpaks for? You can't booby-trap a stimpak, they're sealed.

Which means those, at least, are safe. He puts one in his pack and sticks the other in the vein in his left wrist, and has to bite down hard on the inside of his cheek as liquid fire flashes through his hand. Damn, so he was right after all. It only feels like that if there's infection to burn out.

In a second or two, there's nothing left of the injury but a faint mark that barely qualifies as a scar, and he can flex his fingers like normal. He uses his newfound dexterity to take the rest of that apple slice out of the wrapper and pop it in his mouth, since he's still not feeling any effects.

He puts the trail mix and the whiskey in his pack. He still doesn't trust them, and even if he did, he wouldn't drink the whiskey then and there. He could use a stiff drink, but he's not that desperate for it. Not until he's behind a door he can lock.

He takes out some of his CRAM instead. It's protein. It's what he needs. It doesn't even taste that bad, with the promise of more candied apples to follow.

Then—he rolls his eyes and tells himself he's acting like a superstitious tribal, but he leaves a second can of CRAM precisely in the center of the tray. Just in case.

He turns his attention to the computer terminal, deliberately turning his back to the CRAM offering just to see if anything will happen. He eats another apple slice while he opens the files. The terminal is just patient records, nothing he can make much sense of, and the last entry is more than a century old. A waste of time, but it's always worth checking. But now he can leave.

The CRAM is still there when he looks again. He _almost_ takes it and puts it back in his pack, because he's never been superstitious, he's never believed in ghost stories or fairy tales, and he's _always_ believed in not wasting perfectly good food when he's hungry. If there's a _person_ leaving supplies around, they can obviously take care of themselves, and if they wanted to make a fair trade they'd have said so. And if there really is such a thing as a ghost or a friendly pixie or anything else from the old-timey stories, they probably don't like CRAM any more than he does.

But in the end, he leaves it.

He goes back to the water fountain and drinks his fill. Incredibly, he _still_ doesn't feel sick from it. The morning's nausea is almost gone now that he's awake and has some food in him, and he's not feeling the weakness in his limbs that comes with the onset of radiation poisoning. It'll come; he's been taking some rads in the wasteland, and he knows he'll take more before long. But it won't come _yet_.

The pressure on his bladder is getting to be too urgent to ignore, so he ducks into the bathroom. He keeps the cowboy repeater in his hand while he goes, but he doesn't see or hear a thing.

He loves toilets. They're the ultimate symbol of wealth: a bowl of _water_ just to _piss in_. He flushes, and it all swirls away and gets replaced by clean.

He feels better than he has in days. Weeks, even. Maybe—although he hates to admit it—years. Because this ain't something House _handed_ him for being a good little henchman, with a pat on the head (by way of a Securitron, of course) and a, “You have adequately met my expectations.” It never did sit right, playing second fiddle to that spooky old bastard.

Benny may have lost the hand he played against the old man, but he ain't cashed out yet. Satisfied that he can still come out ahead, somehow, he moves off to scout some more of the vault. There could still be something shiny in the lower levels, and at the moment he's feeling like Lady Luck is on his side.

Of course, he doesn't make it too far.

Oh, it's not that the floor gives out under his feet again, or a pack of ghouls comes swarming out at him, nothing like that. It's just that in the very next room he tries, he finds a row of lockers, all standing open and empty except the one at the end. That one has a piece of a bobby pin broken off in the lock. Whoever jammed it obviously didn't think it was worth trying again, but Benny's not so picky. The junk he's been salvaging includes a pair of tweezers, which he uses to pry out the broken end, and then he starts in with a fresh one.

Benny may not be the most patient guy in the world, but he does all right with stubborn locks. He gets past this one after a couple of minutes of under-the-breath cursing. Mom always told him to keep quiet and listen to what he was doing, but swearing helps him concentrate.

There are no caps or expensive laser pistols in the locker, but he's still glad he's opened it. There are clothes in there, stale-smelling but definitely not covered in sweat and raider blood. A vault suit, a lab coat with a tin of Mentats still in the pocket, a hat with its brim caved in, and a pair of boots. Screw caps and weapons and ammo; right now, this is everything he wants and needs.

It's the boots that decide him. They're two sizes too big for him, but he can wrap some rags around his feet to make up the difference. They won't pinch, they won't rub his ankles raw, his blisters will finally get to heal up—this _is_ his lucky day. He picks up the whole mess and, after a moment of deliberation, walks back to the bathroom.

Vault suits are bad luck. Everybody knows that, not just tribals. Even vaulties, if they have enough brains to get out of the vaults, are smart enough to get rid of the suits. Terrible things happen to people with numbers on their backs. Benny's willing to lay pretty good odds that's just because wastelanders know a soft little vaultie is an easy mark, because the stories say the only way to break the curse is to cut across the number with a piece of armor. Of _course_ extra armor is gonna turn aside most attacks, and make people think twice about targeting the vaultie in the first place. It ain't that hard to figure out. But—there are a lot of stories. And there are a _lot_ of vaults standing empty because things went bad for the people inside.

Still, Benny's willing to risk it. He can button up the lab coat over the suit, and then if anybody sees him they won't _know_ for sure what he's wearing. And the number will be covered. He can put his scavenged armor over it after he washes the blood and guts off. For now, he's going to get clean, goddamn it.

He pauses at the door to the clinic. The CRAM is gone. That should spook him, but it doesn't. He's had some real terrifying things stalking him in the dark, but this doesn't feel like one of them.

“All right, Ghost,” he says out loud. “I'm going in there.” He points to the bathroom, not even sure if whatever he's talking to can see him. “You go haunt some other tunnel for a while, if you know what's good for you.”

He takes the lamp in with him, careful of the tangle of loose wires, and leaves it where he can see what he's doing without having to worry about getting it wet. The door to the hallway won't close for him now, but at least the one to the showers responds to his touch, even if it's a little creaky and won't go down all the way. There's a few inches of space between the door and the ground, but he's confident that it won't open again without his hearing it, and nobody can squeeze in under it. Even so, he'll keep his gun close enough to make a grab for if he needs it. He'll keep a knife even closer. He hopes it doesn't come to that, because wet and naked and vulnerable is not how he ever wants to start a fight, but he can handle himself if he has to.

Peeling his clothes off is harder than it looks. First comes the armor—brahmin hide rigid from water exposure and cracked by the Mojave sun. He should take better care of it, but he'll come across something superior out in the wastes. Babying the stuff feels pointless when he can just throw some leather scraps on the cracks, slap some duct tape on 'em and call it good. He ain't stupid or irresponsible, he just doesn't believe in wasting energy; when he finds something worth taking care of, he will.

The clothes come off next, starchy in patches where dried blood and sweat have stiffened them up. When he found it, the shirt still looked like it might have been white once upon a time. As it flops on the floor, it's mostly yellow-brown stains with some gray struggling to show underneath.

Benny's real glad to be free of his pants—like the boots, they were just a hair too small—and he lets out a long breath of relief. He ain't exactly all washboard abs anymore, and he knows it; the waistband's left a mark where it was squeezing his gut. They had plenty of room in the legs and the seat, at least, but the button that's spent the past few days digging into him can go straight to hell.

He'd be lying if he said finally being naked didn't feel good, but it's also got his nerves on edge. The recirculated air is cool on his skin, _too_ cool in places where his sweat is drying up, and all the hair on his body feels like it's standing up. He's twitchy, too, hypervigilant in the quiet, waiting for something to show up in his peripheral vision.

Water gushes out of the shower head the second he twists the knob. The plumbing in the Tops was good, but the pipes in the vault don't hesitate and sputter before the water gets going. They don't even _rattle_ , and he honestly didn't know that plumbing _could_ function without making a racket. After a few seconds, the water gets hot enough to make steam. God damn. Steam, thick billowing clouds of it that don't just fizzle and fade, and it ain't from boiling water? _Amazing._

He cranks down the temperature some—nice as humidity feels, he needs to be able to see if company drops in—and steps under the shower. The water pressure is so strong it almost knocks him over. Wet heat like nothing he's ever felt before penetrates sore muscles he didn't even know he _had_ , and loosens up all the knots in his back. _Jesus_ , no wonder people never leave a vault unless it's full of mutants or something.

Just scrubbing his hands over wet skin—back and forth, hard as he can stand—produces a nasty film of dead cells and dirt. It's nice to scrape it off, but he's been blasted by hot winds and desert, and rubbing himself raw still doesn't feel like it's good enough. He's going to have to find some soap.

There are a few little bottles on a spindly steel shelf beside the shower head. There's one beside every shower, he notes, the majority of them empty but a few with various grooming items. Most of the bottles in his have prescription labels with words he can't pronounce—better not use those—but a few have little pictures of plants and things. He settles on one that looks unopened: _Almonds and Honey_. What are those? He only knows honey as part of a phrase, and he ain't never heard of almonds. He twists off the cap and gives it a sniff. They smell nice, whatever they are. Not at all like honey mesquite pods, although those smell pretty nice too, in their way.

He pours a handful and starts rubbing it into his hair with one hand while he turns the bottle over with the other. On the back, there's an illustration of some kind of bug thing that looks _like a fucking cazador_ , only smaller, fuzzier _._ Probably what cazadors were before the war. He immediately drops the bottle and cannot get the lather out of his hair fast enough. What the _fuck_ , who bathes in fucking _wasp juice_?

Is it poison? Is he going to die? Is _this_ what finally gets him? He rinses all of it out of his hair, careful to shield his eyes in case it'll do something to them, and waits for any adverse effects as it swirls down the drain. No numbness. No dizziness. None of the usual stuff that comes with a cazador's sting. Not even a mild version of it. The air smells sweet and rich, but he's pretty sure that's what's supposed to happen, not the symptom of a stroke.

Well. He watches the water running down his legs. He feels a little silly. But he kicks the bottle away as carefully as he can and reaches for something else.

French Vanilla, that sounds safe. Vanilla is the kind of cream in the middle of a Fancy Lad, and French, he's almost sure, is a kind of call girl so high class they can only be found at a place like the Ultra-Luxe. He checks the bottle just to be sure, and all he finds is a picture of some beans. What—what the fuck, why _beans_? People washed themselves in bug juice and beans? Pre-war America was _nut_ _ty_.

He lathers himself up, stinkiest parts first in case he runs out of soap too fast, and scrubs every inch of himself he can reach. By the time he's done, his skin's all red and angry, but damn, does it feel good to be _clean_. Even after the bubbles are rinsed away, he stands under the water for another few minutes, not wanting to leave it yet. Nothing hurts, everything smells nice, and nothing is trying to murder him. As far as he's concerned, this is heaven.

He thinks for a minute that he'll just stay until the water starts to get cold. He's already been in long enough that, if he were back at the Tops, he'd be all chattering teeth and goose flesh. But the steam is still going. Maybe he should pick another soap and scrub up again. But, nah, the water's been rinsing clear for a while now, and he already smells like what he's always imagined a birthday cake to be like. (He scavved out an old bakery once when he was real little, maybe four or five, and the pictures he saw on the walls have stuck with him ever since.)

Anyway, this shower is _loud_. There could be something going on right outside the door, and he'd never know. So, reluctantly, he shuts it off, even though he could happily stay in for another hour or so.

He steps out, dripping, and dashes water from his eyes. It's gonna take a while to air-dry, but that's no problem. A steam-filled bathroom is the best—well, _second_ best place he can think of to stand around naked. He'll have time to shave, maybe clean his teeth, all that shit that's important to civilized people. And then go back out into the desert where there's no one to see him all dolled up. Oh, well. _He'll_ feel better, anyway.

He knows there's a wall of mirrors over the sinks in the other room, so he makes his way to it after scooping up his gear and coaxing open the door. He settles on the mirror that best reflects the door to the corridor and drops his junk. He can gussy up _and_ keep an eye out. Handy.

The side of his hand squeaks on the glass as he swipes fog away in a wide zigzag. Reflected back at him is a man he hardly recognizes: jaw shadowed by a week-old beard, skin cooked well past tan by the sun. His shoulders and arms are similarly burned, but they're uneven and blotchy in patches from trading out one piece of armor for a better one whenever he found it.

Most of his body's the same, at least: indoor-living pasty, broad and solid, sort of doughy. There may be some more chest definition, or a little more bulk to his shoulders, than the last time he glimpsed himself in a looking glass, but that might just be wishful thinkin'. For a moment he flexes and decides...yeah, wishful thinkin'.

Damn, he used to be...Well, he used to be twenty. He ain't sure exactly _when_ he was twenty, but it was sometime before Vegas. Did the city do this to him, or is he just _old_? He peers at himself, turning his face this way and that. Sure enough, he finds new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a crease or three between his brows—none of 'em too deep yet, but before long they will be, especially out in that sun and wind. And...shit, he squints, a couple of grays at his temples.

At least he's not losing his hair.

Inspection over, he reaches down into his pack for a straight razor and the last dregs of a bottle of vodka. After dousing both sides of the blade, he scrapes it up under his still-damp chin and hisses. Lather would make it easier, and a hell of a lot less uncomfortable, but he's already done too much dawdling. Besides, he kind of feels like punishing himself for being so soft, anyway. Razor burn ain't a death sentence. Whatever's lurking out in the vault might be. He wants his armor on and his gun in his hands already.

Half his face is smooth when he notices movement over his shoulder in the mirror—something white and _floating_ off to one side of the doorway. The superstitious part of his brain shrieks ghost! like some kind of god damn old world cartoon, but the rest of him moves on instinct. Fast, maybe too fast. He whips around, reaching for the repeater, and fucking _slips_ in the water puddled around his feet. Almost takes his own god damn head off with the razor on the way down. It goes skidding across the tiles as his ass meets floor. Fuck!

It's a cinderblock-meets-tailbone kind of feeling that _spikes_ halfway up his back, but he's still in one piece, and the gun's okay. He wedges it up under his arm. Levels it at the doorway. Doesn't even bother to aim properly before squeezing off a shot. The white thing _drops,_ collapsing into a heap on the ground.

Hot damn, he got it! What'd he get?

He got a...towel? A fucking towel.

This ain't gonna be one of the stories he'll be trotting out to impress the dames when he gets into town.

He gets to his feet, careful-like—he doesn't want to slip and fall again, especially if there's something watching, and he hurts enough to be glad to go slow. He edges toward the hallway, cautious, keeping his gun trained on the open space in case something decides to come barreling through it, but there's nothing, not a whisper, not a twitch. The towel doesn't move. And yeah, it is a towel. Just a plain old white towel, regular sized, clean-looking, with the Vault-Tec logo stitched into one corner.

And no bullet holes that he can see. Jeez, he didn't even hit it? Embarrassing. He picks it up by one corner and finds a spot of fresh blood underneath.

Well, he hit something at least. His friendly stalker is mortal. And it's human, probably, not that he thought a deathclaw was trying to give him presents, because that'd be weird even for the Mojave. He considers the spot of red on the ground. There ain't enough to make him think he's going to find a dead body nearby, but he definitely hurt 'em. Since they ain't seeking vengeance, he has to figure this thing really doesn't want to kill him.

Benny wraps the towel around his waist and leans out into the hallway. Whistles real low in a friendly _yoo-hoo_ kind of way. “You still alive and kickin', Ghost?”

For a second he thinks he hears something—a whimper, maybe, or a sniffle, echoing like it's coming from inside a metal box—but he can't be sure it ain't his imagination because it goes silent almost as soon as his ears pick it out. He holds his breath and listens hard.

Nothing.


	3. ...all the losers will be winners...

Benny stands there listening long enough for the silence to start feeling eerie, and then shakes off the unease that tries to snake down his spine. He straightens up and sets his shoulders. Right. So. He's not going to find out anything just standing here in a towel. Better get dressed and start searching the vault in earnest.

The towel is a lot quicker than air drying. Before long, he's tugging his found vault suit up over his hips. Fits like a glove everywhere, especially where he'd prefer it didn't, and it's a bit short at the ankles, but he'll manage. He clears the zipper and pulls it up to his throat. Sure it's tight, but it's still a damn sight better than his last pair of pants. And, he notes with some pleasure, it's not just slightly tight over his stomach, but around his shoulders and arms, too. He won't be busting any seams anytime soon, but maybe he's gained some muscle after all. A couple more months in the desert, he'll be a blocky little tank again.

He tries to pull the lab coat on, but finds it much too small, so he chucks it. Well, that's all right. He's still got his armor, and it ain't like he can wear both at once.

He gives the armor bits a quick wipe down with the damp towel, which turns the towel from white to a grungy copper-brown but doesn't make much difference to the state of the armor. He straps it all back on anyway. There's no time to be finicky about it.

He sticks his feet into his new boots, and puts the old ones back in his pack. They may be of no more use to him, but they're still decent quality leather. Some small-footed trader is sure to part with a few caps for them.

The spare stimpak is still in his pack, nestled in between some bits and bobbles where it won't get broken. The polite thing to do would be to leave it out for the ghost, since, after all, Benny's the one who wounded it. On the other hand, it must have reserve stimpaks of its own, because it would be damn stupid to give everything away to a stranger. He decides to hang on to it. He's sure to need healing himself, sooner or later.

He glances at himself in the mirror before he goes. He's still whiskery on one side, and the clean-shaven side has a line of blood all the way across the cheek from where the razor slipped. He takes a second to scrape off the rest of the beard, because otherwise it's gonna drive him crazy. As for the scratch, he lets it bleed. He's got nothing to spare healing-wise to put on it; and without any gauze that's halfway clean, there's no point bandaging it. He's just thankful he missed his eye.

All right. He hefts his pack up over his shoulders and heads out into the hallway. From what he's seen of vaults, the upper levels should have some kind of sciencey whatevers—he's guessing that's where he is now because of the clinic. The vault chief's office should be nearby, then. Dorms, eating space, school room, and whatever else oughtta be down below, with the reactor and trash processing and shit like that even farther down. Unless this is one of the weird vaults, in which case he could find just about anything, and most of it will try to eat him.

Hopefully it ain't one of the weird vaults.

With the repeater in hand, he pokes his head into every doorway, looks around. Some are full of trash and debris to the point of being impassable—two that are side by side have the ceiling caved in—but the ones that seem safe are worth looking into.

In a twist _nobody_ saw coming, most of the rooms branching off from the corridor are empty. A couple have some junk worth saving, but he's got to really dig around in all the hidey holes previous scavvers missed. Even then, it's mostly empty tin cans and things of that nature—stuff that's only good to sell for scrap. Only one has lab equipment that's probably worth a lot of caps, but—he tries to lift one heavy-duty microscope, it slips out of his hands and drops with a _clang,_ barely missing his toes _—_ it's all far too big to carry. Maybe if he had a super mutant pal along to do his heavy lifting, but there's no way he can do it alone. He takes a couple of little things that'll fit in his pack and moves on.

He follows the signs that he _thinks_ say “Overseer's Office”; several have letters peeled off or are smudged beyond recognition, so he's kind of guessing. When he comes upon a security terminal with its wires hanging loose and spitting sparks, he figures he's found it. Benny's never been too good with technology—he always wants to thump it when it gets finicky, and that doesn't _usually_ help—but if he's lucky, he can crack it 'cause he knows what to look for.

Benny pokes around on the keyboard one finger at a time because he never got the hang of fancy multi-fingered typing, and the screen lights up.

Most RobCo terminals have a randomized encryption...thingy. He can't remember what it's called, but Ortal told him all about it while she was programming Yes Man. The user punches in a password, and the software generates a bunch of words of the same length, with similar letters. The longer the password, the more complex the randomized elements. Real personalized by design, she said, so the whole pre-war population could have their own terminal with minimal fuss. A four letter password for Junior because kids are smartasses who like four letter words; eight letter passwords for Mom and Pop's recipes. Ten or twelve for the _real_ heavy security shit, like what you'd find standing between you and an army base weapons locker. Each one more complicated to break through than the last.

But there's an exploit: the software can't detect spelling errors. If the user who set the password fucked up a word with an extra letter or two? Hit it hard, baby, that's the right switch.

The majority of wastelanders can't read too well, and they spell even worse. So most terminals that have been compromised by post-war people are locked with short words that are hard to mess up. But this terminal was programmed by somebody who got ambitious and didn't have the learning to back it up.

On this point, Benny's got the edge: House _insisted_ the families learn to read _properly_. All those fuckin' mind numbing hours of “ _See Jane run”_ that led to even the bigger snoozefest of “ _Marley was dead, to begin with.”_ are finally gonna pay off.

He highlights _crackurjacks_ and taps enter.

The door stutters open.

And inside, is something that causes his ears to ring with the sound of cash registers and slot machines.

Stuff _._ So much _stuff._ A fuckin' _stockpile_! Ammo containers stacked up neatly in a corner, tools and scrap and clothes and medkits and chems. And food! Mostly boxes of Sugar Bombs, Dandy Boys and Fancy Lads, but there's enough here to feed six of him! There ain't even any mines or tripwires.

Benny stares, pleasantly shocked at his good fortune. Maybe he's not on the outs with Lady Luck after all. This stroke of luck feels like a great big kiss from her. The vault must belong to a real diligent hermit. Everything he thought had been picked clean by scavvers looks like it's here. “Been holding out on me, Ghost.”

He can't take it all—and he wouldn't return his host's hospitality that way anyhow, he ain't a _complete_ fink even if he did shoot 'em a little—but he can pick through and take a few necessities that won't be missed. Just enough to keep him alive topside for a week or two. Maybe a couple of things in good enough shape to trade for a decent amount of caps, or that would be worth something even more valuable to the right buyer.

Ammo first, he decides after a fast look around. There's plenty of it, and enough in the right caliber that taking a couple boxes won't make a difference. Medical supplies next? There's a tin first aid kit with a handful of stimpaks tucked inside, cushioned by rolled up gauze. He shouldn't take more than one, really. But...

So far, this vault is empty. No radroaches, no super mutants, no ghouls. Does his invisible friend really _need_ all those stimpaks? Compared to _him_? He's gonna be going out into the Mojave, where everything but the shadows try to kill a man—and them only probably because they ain't figured out how yet. He's not a real rat or anything, sure, but a guy's still got to look out for number one, right?

He takes four. Leaves two. Then changes his mind and grabs another. That makes a nice even five. Maybe it ain't nice, maybe he'll burn in hell for it, but it's _smart_.

The chems he leaves alone, mostly. Anything that dulls his senses long term is right out—the only thing he's really got going for him right now is his brain; if he fries that, he's done for. He grabs a couple hits of Med-X, and a single Jet inhaler _strictly_ for deathclaw related emergencies. A guy can never go wrong with sharper reflexes when there's a fuckton of angry lizard trying to tear off his face.

There are some MREs buried under all the boxes of junk food—and they're dusty, so probably unwanted. He tucks as many as he can fit into his pack. Happily, he dumps his cans of CRAM to make room for more. Rips open a box of Sugar Bombs and tosses a sack of cereal on top.

Really, he's doin' this ghost a favor. CRAM's better than MREs and junk food. Lots of vitamin...sodium.

Well, it's easier to eat, anyway.

Ammo, meds, food…he points at each section of the stockpile, ticking them off in his head. What next? Clothes? Nah, he's got clothes, and there's no armor that looks better than what he's got. There aren't any weapons, really, just some security batons. Those are a little too up-close-and-personal for Benny's fighting style.

The junk? Yeah. That's the ticket. The junk.

He moves toward a stack of blankets wrinkled up in the corner, beside a bunch of useless shit. Must be where the ghost sleeps. There's a few books—worthless to traders, and since there's no _Shell Scott_ mysteries mixed in, there's nothing he'd even like to read if he ever gets desperate enough to bother.

Lots of scrap. Toy cars, a couple of rocket ships, a Jangles the Moon Monkey that's singed like it's been on fire. All of them are deconstructed to some degree. Bits and pieces of metal mixed in with some small, fiddly tools, and weird little contraptions pieced together from the fragments of junk. He almost chuckles—the vault occupant is a tinker spirit? A _gremlin?_ Fuckin' ridiculous.

Benny digs around some more and finds a couple of lockpicks and some lighter fuel—convenient. He takes 'em and puts them in a pocket. He shifts the blankets around, finds a pillow and a teddy bear hidden half under the other scrap—with a clean red ribbon still around its neck and everything. _That_ could be worth a few caps. Pretty things are rare out here. A hermit gremlin ghost thing's got no use for a fluffy toy, anyhow. And, he reasons, he can use it as a decent pillow. It's better than taking his host's pillow, ain't it? Because he is _sorely_ tempted to do just that.

Yeah. He stuffs the bear into his pack. No harm done. The ghost won't even know it's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This marks the last of the slower, contemplative "setting up the chess pieces" chapters. Shit will hit the fan and _keep_ hitting the fan for Benny in short order after this point. In lieu of sympathy flowers, please send whiskey, sterile bandages and racy get-well-soon cards.


	4. ...all the givers shall receive...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Head's up: Benny's a bit of an objectifying creep in this chapter. Because he's Benny.

Benny's pack is significantly heavier, its straps cutting deep into his shoulders with the extra weight, when he makes his way to the lower level of the vault. Not that he expects to find much. His gracious host had to find all those goodies somewhere, and he can't imagine the guy went out into the wasteland for them and then dragged them back to a hole in the ground. Still, there might be something worthwhile lower down. Something hermit-guy didn't know how to use, or didn't understand was valuable. Never hurts to check.

Maybe he'll even run into his new pal. Hopefully he'll see the sense in Benny raiding his stash, maybe even appreciate the gesture of all that CRAM in spite of the shooting _incident_ , and they'll be able to keep the encounter friendly.

Yeah, right, Benny thinks dryly as he pokes his gun barrel into the first doorway he finds. And maybe radroaches will set up a benevolent system of government. (In fact, he'd like to see that. Couldn't be any worse than the NCR. Might even be better.)

He's willing to give some of the stuff back, if the ghost asks for it. Especially if he asks for it at gunpoint. Not everything, because he _needs_ it, damn it. But some. He does feel kinda like a fink for taking all those stimpaks after he shot the guy. A little, he shot the guy _a little_. There was hardly any blood.

He'll give back the stimpaks if he meets the ghost. Or...one of them, maybe two. That's fair, right?

The first two rooms he sticks his nose into are living quarters, both of 'em empty except for some table lamps. Not a whole lot of use for those out in the desert. The next one yields a pristine leather jacket that's technically worth a lot of caps but realistically worthless. It'd fetch a great price, but it's too hot to wear under the Mojave sun and so bulky he can't justify making room for it in his pack. He drops it back where he found it and moves into the bedroom.

Benny stops dead in the doorway.

There's a skeleton on the mattress, wearing the bottom half of a tattered vault suit, sleeves tied loose around its waist like a belt. It lies on its side, curled in on itself and clutching a picture frame and a baby rattle. This is the first real sign he's had of the vault's inhabitants, of what might have happened to them that cleared this place out. But something about the picture isn't right, in a way he doesn't expect. The remains are large, deformed. The bones bulge oddly, like they've been pumped full of air or somehow got bigger after they were done growing. It can't be what he thinks it is.

He edges into the room and gets close enough to take a good look. Inside the wide skull and its strange square jaw is a set of huge, blunt teeth. A super mutant?

He slings the repeater over his back so his hands are free. Like he's approaching a grave—and in a way, he is—Benny steps up next to the bed. For a moment he hesitates, hand hovering over the picture frame, but he shakes it off and reaches for it anyway. He pulls it from the slack skeletal fingers that crumble away beneath his touch. Under the thin layer of dust on the glass he finds a faded family portrait. Mom, Pop, a couple of towheaded kids, and an old lady with her knitting. All smiling, all human.

Frowning, he puts it back.

It doesn't fit with anything he knows. Super mutants don't live in vaults. They sure as hell don't die in vaults holding keepsakes. But this one did. In a vault suit, yet.

What happened here?

As he turns away from the scene, he catches a flicker of movement out past the bedroom in the doorway to the corridor. It's only out of the corner of his eye, so he can't be completely sure his peepers aren't playing tricks on him, but he pulls his gun back into his hands anyway.

“Hello?”

He sticks his head back out into the den, looks around, then leans out into the corridor. Benny sees nothing.

“I don't like bein' watched, Ghost,” he calls out into the emptiness.

On some level he expects a smartass voice to echo back, “ _I don't like being shot_ ” or something like it. That's what he'd do. But it's quiet.

“We're gonna run into each other sooner or later, pally,” Benny says—louder than normal speech, but not quite a yell—starting back down the hall towards the next doorway. Nobody can be this good at hiding forever. “Why don't you be friendly, come out, say how do.”

There's still no answer.

He considers holstering the gun. He's probably scaring the ghost, running around with a loaded weapon after he's already drawn first blood. But he still ain't a hundred percent convinced he's not gonna spring an ambush sometime soon.

“Hey,” he calls down the hallway, and the word echoes back to him. “I'm not lookin' to hurt you, dig?” And even more than that, he's not looking to _get_ hurt. “I can't make any promises if you startle me again.” Silence.

“All right, okay, you win,” he mutters under his breath, slipping closer to the next doorway. “We'll just keep tryin' to kill each other, then.”

In his heart of hearts, the one he keeps hidden under all those layers of self-serving, scheming asshole, he knows that's not exactly an impartial view of the situation. But Benny's got a stubborn ego that's always sure to cast him as the underdog regardless of the truth.

Sure, the ghost hasn't _actually_ tried to hurt him, just scared the shit out of him a couple of times and followed him. But hell, who's around to care about the facts? It _feels_ threatening, bein' stalked by an invisible something, and ain't that what really counts? A looming threat when a guy's just tryin' to get by is about as good as a follow-through, from where Benny stands. It's why so many tribals shoot first and ask questions never. That shit keeps you alive and lets you sleep at night; compartmentalizing is the great post-apocalyptic national pastime.

He moves on to the next room. It's bigger than the others so far on this level, the walls covered by colorful construction paper cut outs, and full of little desks. The schoolroom. Great, he can load up on dull pencils and clipboards. Perfect for the man who has everything. Really, though, somebody's sure to find some use for 'em. He once met a guy who built a house out of that stuff.

Benny makes his way through the room, popping open desks along the way. Unlike all the others so far, this one ain't picked clean yet, but he doesn't have a real pressing need for decades old spit balls and crumbling erasers. One of the desks has a locked up pencil box inside, so he half-convinces himself that there'll be something worthwhile inside, but after busting the lock, all he finds is a couple sheets of paper.

One has _Will you be my boyfriend? check yes/no_ and a couple of lopsided, empty check boxes scribbled on it in childish handwriting. The other is just _Becky + Henry_ written over and over again inside little hearts. At the very bottom, in the fanciest cursive a kid could probably manage, there's _Mrs._ _Becky Smith_ crossed out. Beneath that is another, better received attempt that's been circled a bunch of times: _Mrs. Becky Bowen-Smith_

He rolls his eyes and tosses the pencil box back in the desk, slamming the lid. Kids. Half the size of grown-ups and about an eighth as smart. They're like the worst part of every moron who leads with the heart, but shrunk down into an annoyingly whiny, useless package.

The other desks aren't any more interesting. There's a Mentats tin in one, but when he opens it, he finds it crammed full of bubblegum and paper clips. Another one has some crayon drawings that are actually pretty good, but not worth any caps, so he neatens up the papers and leaves them be.

When he's almost done with the kiddie desks, he gets bored and wanders over to the teacher's. There's a coffee cup, stained dark brown all inside like it was left full and the liquid evaporated over time, and some paperwork that doesn't merit his interest. He pulls open one of the drawers and rifles around in it. Lesson plans and notepads. Half a dozen little cards, each of 'em dated a year apart, all of 'em full of meaningless sentiments like _To Our_ _Favorite Teacher, Miss Wilson_ like the kids who wrote 'em ever had anyone else to choose from.

But under all that...Benny's eyebrows jump and he lets out a low whistle.

He plucks out a glossy photograph. The subject, a hot little number spilling out of black lace, kneels on a bed in a pair of thigh high stockings and winks at the camera. The scenery around her ain't much to look at, but her coy smile makes the reality of the vault fade into the background. She has her hands up, kind of behind her head to lift her hair up a little, cleverly camouflaging the camera shutter bulb and part of the cord that lets her take the photo. After lingering on her curves for a moment longer than he probably should, he flips the photo over. It's cheekily inscribed:

_Miss Wilson—_

_See me after class._

— _Miss Schwartz_

That sure is something. Makes a guy feel sorry he never went to school. He starts to put the picture back where it belongs, then, on impulse, tucks it inside his scavenged vault suit instead. That Miss Schwartz and Miss Wilson must have had a nice thing going. Somebody ought to...how should he put it? Preserve their memory. There just ain't enough real romance out in the wasteland. It'd be a shame to let such a treasured token of affection go unappreciated, left to molder in a vault. He's doing the right thing. History will thank him.

Yeah, he thinks with an inward, self-deprecating chuckle, that's plausible.

He sweeps the room with his gaze one last time. There's not much left to look over, except that thingamajig in the middle of the room. The thing that lights up and makes cartoons play on that screen on the wall. At least, it was always cartoons when he scavved around as a kid; the kind that star Vault Boy or Private Snafu. He's older now, more experienced, with the polish of Vegas on him, and he's got no use for that kid stuff. But he might be able to pull some components out of the thing. He runs his hand over the back, looking for any moving parts.

His finger finds a switch, and after a second, it flickers to life. The bulb makes a _sizzle-_ _ffspt_ sound, heats up and all of a sudden, in full, eye-popping color, is more green than he's ever seen in his whole goddamn life.

The machine's speakers crackle out _,_ _—above several major fault lines._ _Even so, Nevada's Lake Tahoe is home to all kinds of wildlife._

Benny sits down, hard, on one of the classroom chairs and stares. Just...stares.

There on the screen, lush, wild vegetation stands out against a blue sky. The forest rings a body of water so dazzlingly clear he's never seen anything like it. Spots of color dart in and out of tree branches. Red ones with crests, blue ones with stripes. They're like the Mojave's ravens, but not. Song birds? Is that what those are? They're so _bright_.

The speakers whine a little, stutter over a few words and manage to get out something about — _millions of years of volcanic activity—_ before they die, leaving him watching the flickering images in stunned silence.

Jesus. _J_ _esus._ This is what the world looked like? He's only seen glimpses of the pre-war, a picture here and there in books that weren't too moldy to flip through. The holotapes House gave him, filled with cities lit up against the night sky, men in fancy suits and women in dresses that were clean but low cut. But nature? All vivid and animated, without sand, without bones bleaching in the sun, without the threat of death from all sides? He ain't never seen anything like it.

“And you fucked it up, didn't you, you maniacs,” he says quietly. This was _Nevada_ , his mind reels. This is what _this place_ looked like. Did all of Nevada territory look like this at some point? Or just Lake Tahoe? And why does he know that name?

Oh, shit, he realizes suddenly, staring at the screen without really seeing it anymore. The T'hoe Gulch? Can't be. That place is almost dry as the Mojave, from what he's heard, and what water a man can find is irradiated beyond all hope. It sure as shit don't have any trees and birds. But that's what the bombs did, ain't it? Killed everything good and pretty in the world, leaving the dregs for everybody left on the wrong side of time.

He shakes himself and gets back to his feet. With one last glance that he ain't prepared to accept as longing, he flips the switch. The picture dies, just like the sound did.

He walks away from that room and that machine, with its impossible pictures of a soft, pretty world. It's like a dream, but he's got to get back to reality. Reality is blistering sun and stinging sand, rads and poison and death around every corner. Reality ain't pretty. And if his feet drag a little and his shoulders hunch like he's fighting the urge to look back, Benny doesn't notice. Or doesn't let himself notice. The only way out is forward.

Not that being logical about it stops a prickling, unfamiliar tightness in his throat that he can't quite swallow down. The kind of tightness that's like he's developed an allergy to the knowledge that, but for an accident of birth that plunked him on earth a couple hundred years too late, that soft, pretty world would have been his. It ain't like he's gonna cry about it or anything, but still. What the fuck.

Maybe kids ain't the only ones not too bright. Maybe humans, no matter what size, are just sentimental, stupid creatures.

* * *

The ghost makes no further appearances, not even the corner-of-the-eye ones, while he finishes searching the vault. There are a few weird noises behind the walls, the sort that make him think maybe a mole rat will pop out at him and try to bite his face off, but ultimately nothing comes of it.

As he expected, there's not much left to pick over during the rest of his tour of this example of Vault-Tec's finest architecture. But he does find a few things that are worth making room for in his pack. When he's through, he follows the signs for the exit all the way back up to the top floor. At the other end of it, far from where he came in, he finds the big, steel door that leads to the outside.

He yanks a Pip-Boy off another supermutant-sized vaultie corpse near the door, only the second one he's found in the whole fuckin' place. The machine's too small to be worn by the corpse on its arm, so it strung it around its neck on a bit of yellow rope, like a bulky necklace. He pokes at the screen and it responds with a cheerful series of beeps and clicks.

He ain't never really used one seriously before, but he's seen 'em. Even played around with the one Sarah Weintraub has while they were lyin' in bed in the afterglow of some seriously mediocre sex. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out if a chirpy airhead like her could manage it. At least he'll have a proper compass out there in the middle of nowhere—and a radio to break up the monotony. Three weeks ago, he was so sick of _Big Iron_ he thought his head would bust if he heard it one more time. But if it's the first song he tunes into today, he'll sing along with a grin on his face. Well, maybe not a grin.

As he approaches the door control, he glances behind himself because he's got that itch like someone's watching him. Besides, it's been too long since the ghost made any noise for his liking. Is it really just going to let him leave? After he...er...liberated some of its stash and shot it? But there's nothing, not in the shadowy parts of the room where the lighting has failed, and not in the hallway leading into the vault proper.

He turns his attention back to the door control interface and plugs in after some fumbling to get the Pip-Boy's...data cord...thingamabob out of its slot. When he presses the big red button, lights flash and klaxons blare before the metal walkway starts to move toward the door.

Well. He looks back at the vault that tried its damnedest to kill him before it saved his life. It's been a profitable little excursion. Not necessarily enough to justify the hassle, but then nothing's ever really _enough_ for Benny, with a hassle or without one. Even if he ever claws his way to the top again, he'll still just use the height to reach for a newer, shinier, more distant star. But this ain't been too bad. He even got the best damn shower of his life out of it.

The massive door rolls aside with a metallic rumble that vibrates all the way to his bones. Beyond it, he can see a tiny spot of daylight down a long tunnel that slopes upwards. Daylight. Sunshine. Old Mother Mojave. He feels strangely giddy about the prospect. Heat and dust and thirst, sure, monsters and raiders and slick traders who try to screw you out of a handful of caps, but fresh air and open space that feels like home.

His too-large boots thump along the steel mesh walkway a few paces. But abruptly, he stops. He doesn't quite know why, or maybe he doesn't want to accept that he really is a superstitious tribal who follows all those superstitious tribal rules. He turns back again to look at the vault.

“So long, Ghost,” he shouts as loud as he can, voice echoing off the walls, down the hallways into nothingness. “If you're ever in the desert,” he says, a little quieter, with a smirk, “don't look me up.”

Then, hitching his pack up higher on his shoulders, he starts for the surface.

Maybe this little detour ain't been enough. But for now, it'll do.

* * *

He's been out maybe an hour when he comes to a canyon he doesn't like the look of. Too narrow, too twisty, the walls too steep. Be real easy to get pinned in there, and he'd never see an ambush coming until it was too late. In the old days, he'd have sent one of the more trusting young kids ahead to scout, set someone sharp-eyed and capable to watch for movement along the cliff tops, and taken on the vital job of rear guard himself in case a group of raiders got clever and tried to flank them. Now that it's just him, he figures it would be smarter to just backtrack and go around, but that'll lose him time. Maybe more time than he can afford. Sure, he's got supplies to last a while, but the sun is a killer. At least in the canyon there's some shade.

And, he glances at the Pip-Boy, this is the fastest route to a little town he knows of, if he's remembering right. It's no Vegas, or even Reno, and it's mostly farmers who try to force something living out of the sandy soil, but there ought to be a merchant and a good place to sleep.

It's a gamble, but after all, Benny is a gambler. He starts ahead.

A high-noon sun blazes above when he enters the canyon, and it's halfway to sunset before he sees another living creature. Even then it's just a raven that caws at him and disappears with a ruffling of feathers. He passes the time with a static-tinged broadcast of Mojave Music Radio that feels just as homey and welcoming as the sun does. Maybe he's sentimental, maybe he's just relieved to not be stranded with silence, but _Johnny Guitar_ 's never sounded sweeter.

At last, he comes across a tumbledown prospector's shack leaning against one of the canyon walls. It's empty, and he's been walking for hours, so he decides to stop awhile. Maybe even use the little fire pit out front to cook up one of those MREs. It seems safe enough to take a break for now, and even though it doesn't have a door, the shack is good cover. He can boil up some water, pour a little in the special pouch to heat the food, and use the rest for the drinks. These things usually come with a powder that turns plain water into some kind of fruit juice, plus another one that turns into something almost like coffee. And while he's cooking, there are side dishes that are supposed to be eaten cold.

Benny shrugs out of his pack and lets it fall to the ground beside him. His back and shoulders ache some, but it's the good kind of ache that comes from having too much to carry. Not something he's about to complain about after a recent brush with lean times. He gets a fire going with some brush for tinder and a few decent dry sticks for fuel, then pokes around in the prospector's shack for a cooking pot. He lucks out and finds a cast iron, pot bellied one. It's got the little feet on it so he won't have to try and suspend it over the fire and everything.

Hot damn, he reflects. No enemies in a nice shady canyon shortcut, _Johnny Guitar_ in heavy rotation on the radio, and a prospector's shack with what he needs in it. It's turning out to be a real good day, ain't it?

He's had MREs once or twice in the past, but it's been a while. They're a pretty rare find. He wonders how so many of them got piled up in one place. Looks like these are all the same kind, too. Pork chops. Whatever kind of animal a pork was, he hopes it's good eating.

There's a book of matches in there, sealed in a plastic pouch with the hot sauce and chewing gum. Those U.S. Government people sure thought of everything. Now he can give his lighter a rest, maybe trade it to somebody too dumb to check how much fuel is left.

It's no problem to get the fire going, and he empties one of his precious bottles of water into the pot and gathers up the rest of the stuff to see what's ready to eat without waiting for the water to boil.

A nearby boulder makes a good enough seat, where he can rest and stretch out and really enjoy the feeling of not being on his feet. He's in better shape than he was a day ago, but it's still damn nice to be able to relax a minute.

Applesauce, crackers, some kind of liquid cheese, and a thing called a mint chocolate pound cake that he's real excited to try. There's an entire goddamn meal in that little package. There's also a spoon—not a knife and fork—and for some reason, toilet paper.

 _Jingle, Jangle, Jingle_ comes on the radio as he fixes on the applesauce to start with. He shrugs and lets it play. It's a good song the first hundred times, dramatic and all. He's humming along as he tears open the foil and raises it to drink straight from the pouch.

And then there's a _crack_ from somewhere above him, and it goes spinning out of his hand.

Moving purely by reflex, he throws himself flat on the ground, hopefully putting the cooking pot between him and the sniper. It's not big, but it might be enough to block a shot to the vitals. He turns his head to the side and sees there's a _fucking bullet hole_ right through the pouch, applesauce leaking out into the dirt.

Damn it, his gut says, that's the best thing in an MRE! Then his head takes over, and he notes the distance to the door of the shack. He can make it if he's quick. Cautiously, he reaches out to grab the pack he left sitting by the fire, and a second bullet _pings_ off the cast iron pot not an inch from his hand. He snatches it back, still empty. Okay, he can grab it _after_ he's killed whoever this is tryin' to put new holes in his head. He's got enough ammo for now, stuffed in his pockets—

Wait. Shit. Had. He _had_ enough ammo. Vault suits don't have pockets. Just had to have those clean clothes, didn't he? Fuck.

A third bullet ricochets off the pot as Benny makes another grab for his pack. He snags it, barely, and rifles around for a box of bullets. Another shot whizzes over his head. That's four. Hopefully they'll need to reload soon. Please, please let them need to reload soon.

Once he's got the bullets, he stuffs them down his vault suit. He puts the pack on his back as an extra piece of armor.

On his belly, elbows in the sand, Benny shimmies along toward the shack as fast as he can. He counts three more shots that punch into the ground near him, then there's enough of a break that he takes a chance and _dives_ for the entrance to the shack.

Seven rounds. He pulls the repeater from his back and braces himself against the wall beside the shack door. Seven rounds. If the magazine was full, that means a small caliber gun. If it wasn't, it could be just about anything, but the next hail of bullets should give him some idea of what he's dealing with. He sure hopes it's a small caliber; he can survive a couple flesh wounds from one of those without it putting too much strain on his ability to fight back.

Above his head, there's a window—mostly boarded up, but with a gap just big enough for him to see out of. And aim, when he needs to.

Benny's eyes sweep from side to side, but there's nothing out there.

No, that's wrong. There's nothing he can see _directly._ Thrown over some rocks, a shadow wavers, like its owner is walking down. Hold on a second, that ain't right. What kind of moron gives up the high ground? The sniper is on the move, working their way from their perch to get close enough to—

With a _snap_ , wood splinters inward on the other side of the shack. Benny hits the deck, but lodges his gun's barrel between two slats of wood to fire blindly a couple of times. At least the sniper's not too smart. They're on equal footing now; even without aiming properly, he's got a fighting chance of hitting something on the ground.

There's no return fire when he stops to reload, but he ain't naive enough to take that as a good sign. Especially not when, a moment later, a vodka bottle comes flying fast through the open door. It shatters against the wall, and he covers his face in expectation of an explosion, or at least a small flash of fire, but it never comes. Instead, a piece of paper see-saws in the air, fluttering all the way down to the ground. What the fuck?

It's got to be a trap. How it's a trap, he doesn't have a clue, but it must be one. Maybe a way to lure him into the doorway so the guy can take a clean shot. 'Cause there ain't no way a sniper wants to be pen pals five seconds after trying to take the top of his skull off. But he ain't gonna fall for it. No way, no how.

With the butt of his rifle, Benny sweeps the paper closer so he can get a decent look at it—but not too close. It's face down, so he can't read the message, but from this distance he can tell it's blue around the edges, like it came from one of those notepads he sees around, and it has a light, tiled pattern in an even paler shade. _VAULT-TEC_ repeats over and over again inside a stylized, tilted oval.

Oh, shit.

Maybe it's just a coincidence?

He reaches out with the rifle again and drags the paper even closer, close enough he can reach out and snatch it up with one hand, keeping the space out front covered as best he can. He flattens himself against the wall, still down low where he can hope he won't take any surprise fire, and turns it over to get a look at the front.

There's a big **17** in yellow at the top of the page, same as the back of the vault suit, as if he needed any confirmation of where this came from. And there are words on the page, in the big, messy scrawl of somebody who's got the hang of writing, but hasn't had much practice at it. Tribal-style. Benny's handwriting ain't much better, even though he's been doing it for years.

And the wording of the note is just how any good tribal would do it, too, real short and to the point:

_GIVE IT BACK_


	5. ...here's to trouble free tomorrows...

In this rundown shack, staring at a sheet of Vault-Tec stationery with that accusing _GIVE IT BACK_ scribbled on it, is where Benny comes to an impasse. It's a problem of his own making, of which he is quite aware, the result of his greed and hubris just like every other spot of trouble he's ever found himself neck deep in.

 _Which_ 'it'?

The stimpaks? He knew from the minute he took 'em that he was being a real creep, not leaving the ghostie any extra. But five stimpaks make a _them_ , not an _it_ , and tracking him across this much desert is an act of either desperation or fury. Nobody should take healing that personally.

What else did he take? The food? The scrap metal? The—

His hand goes to his chest, feeling for the photograph he's tucked inside his vault suit. Of course. The ghost wants Miss Schwartz. Well, he can hardly blame it for that, can he? He pulls out that four inch glossy slice of heaven and says a fond farewell.

“All ri-ight,” he sing-songs at the top of his voice, hoping the ghost can hear him. “Message received!”

He flips the photo over, to show the almost-blank side, and waves it in the doorway like a white flag. No bullets pop it out of his hand, so he takes that as a good sign.

“Well, so long, gorgeous,” he says to the lady, as he rolls up the photograph and sticks it inside one of his empty bottles. He makes sure it's one that's dry inside, because if the ghost is this steamed that he _took_ the picture, he doesn't want to see what'll happen if he _damages_ it.

He tosses the bottle out the door, gentle enough that it'll roll a few feet instead of smashing on the ground.

Then there's silence. Benny waits. Is it over? Is the ghost already gone? Carefully, he sticks his head through the open doorway to see what's going on. He has to admit, he's a little curious to see what his quiet shadow actually looks like.

The bottle lies untouched in the open ground, the picture slowly uncurling inside. But where's the ghost?

“Hello?” he calls.

In answer, a rock comes flying at him from somewhere off to the side and cracks him just above the eye.

Shit! He falls back behind cover, clapping one hand over the new injury. There's blood under his fingers, and it's definitely going to bruise, but he knows he's lucky. It was just a pebble, and not thrown all that hard.

“Okay, I'm sorry! No peeking.”

He leans back against the rotting wood and takes a few steadying breaths. There ain't much to do while he waits, but he reaches into his pack to find a piece of scrap cloth. Presses it gently to the new cut on his head to staunch the bleeding. Outside there's nothing but silence.

After a few seconds, the bottle makes a return trip, sailing through the doorway and bouncing off the wall. A heartbeat later, a fresh hail of bullets puncture the shack, and he's left covering his head while wooden splinters fly.

From where he's huddled, he can see the bottle. The photograph remains undisturbed inside.

“What do you want?” The only answer is another, single gunshot. “Hey! Don't waste all your ammo on warning shots!” Wait, why is he giving it advice? If it wastes all its ammo _not_ shooting him, he's got nothing left to worry about. Well, probably.

There's another stretch of silence, longer than the last one, but he doesn't dare stick his face anywhere exposed enough to look outside. Minutes pass in the uneasy calm, until a rock, wrapped in paper and twine, clatters through the doorway. It comes to rest near Benny's boot, and he grabs it, untying the string.

 _COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP_ it says, in much shakier lettering than the last, because this one must have been scrawled on an uneven bit of rock and in a hurry. He flips it over and finds another, _NO TRICKS_ _OR ELSE DINAMITE NEXT_

“You don't have any dyna—” He hesitates. He didn't _see_ any dynamite in the vault. That doesn't mean it wasn't there. And even if it wasn't, that doesn't mean the ghost wasn't carrying any around. “All right, I'm comin' out. I'm going to put my gun down, right where you can see it first. Don't shoot!”

He makes sure the gun is fully loaded, secures his pack to his back, and then, slow and careful, he reaches the repeater out into the doorway to show he's putting it on the ground. He stretches around the door enough to gently toss it a few inches in front of the threshold, but not too far. He'll stay on his knees, scoot into the doorway to surrender, then wait until the ghost comes out of hiding to get whatever it wants. Once he gets a good look at it, he'll drop to his belly, grab for the gun, and—if he's lucky—blow its head clean off. The pack will hopefully take any bullets it throws at him before he can kill it.

Maybe it's a dirty trick, but after all, that's what Benny's made of. The good lord took a piece of cheater cloth and cut him from it whole. A man like him can't shake his nature any more than he can his shadow.

He edges into the doorway, palms turned up, and squints in the sunlight. “All right. Whatever you want, come and get it.”

Nothing happens for a minute. Benny holds still until his knees start to ache from the pressure on 'em—they've both been broken too many times for this—and he starts to wonder if the ghost sees what he's got in the works, or if maybe he's just too close to cover for his new friend's peace of mind.

“This is killin' my knees,” he calls out. “You mind if I get into a more comfortable position?”

Nothing happens, so he puts one hand on the doorframe to steady himself and eases his way out into the sunlight and the softer sand. Now he's that much farther from a wall to hide behind, but he's that much closer to his gun. He keeps his movements nice and slow and his hands out in the open, just like he's supposed to. Should be any second now…

Another rock comes whizzing through the air at him, from the opposite direction this time. He ducks instinctively, but it—intentionally—goes wide and clatters off the wall above his head. He turns in the direction the rock came from, tensed to spring for the repeater, and catches a blur of motion before a cloud of sand explodes in his face.

Damn! This thing is faster than he thought. Benny falls back, coughing and spitting, trying to blink the grit out of his eyes. There's no chance he can _find_ the gun right now, much less hit anything if he fires blind, and besides, that faint scuffle and slide he hears sounds like his friend is already kicking it out of reach. No chance to get back into the shack in time, either. Shit. He's been outmaneuvered by a ghost.

What feels like the muzzle of a pistol jabs him in the back of the head. The intent is clear: _Don't move_. So he doesn't.

“You're good.” His voice sounds rough, forced out between grains of sand. But there's honest admiration in there. He's on his knees, half-blind with a gun to his head, and he still doesn't even know exactly what he's up against. Couldn't have done it better himself.

The ghost doesn't say anything, of course, but he feels a tug as it opens his pack and rummages through the junk inside.

After a few seconds, the movement behind him gets a little wilder. Angrier. He doesn't like the combination of _angry_ and _loaded gun to the head_.

“Let me take the pack off. You can dump everything out,” he says. The ghost goes still. Then the muzzle jabs him a little harder. “I'll put my hands back up, I swear.”

There's a moment of hesitation, and then a sharp yank on the pack. He figures that means he can take it off, so he drops his arms and lets it slide down. As soon as the weight is gone, he raises his hands again, resting them on top of his head instead of holding them up in the air, since it's less of a strain that way. And his movement will be a little less obvious if he finds an opportunity to take advantage of the ghost's distraction.

The gun twitches against the base of his skull and he hears the clatter and shuffle of the bag being emptied onto the ground. The crystalline _clink_ of the stimpaks, the plasticized paper _rustle_ of the MREs; finally, the scrape of ragged fingernails against canvas, reaching for something in the bottom of the pack and pulling it out. He can pick out bits and pieces of what he hears, but he can't for the life of him figure what the ghost is looking for.

Benny hears it exhale harshly—a relieved kind of a sound—and the press of steel in his hair eases up some. His eyes dart to the side on instinct, even though he doesn't dare move if he wants to keep his head attached, and he wets his bottom lip with a tongue too dry to do much good.

“Got what you wanted?”

The gun creeps around the side of his head, and the sound of footsteps in the sand around his right side makes him freeze. Light footsteps, he realizes, too delicate to be anything as big as him. Must be a scrawny little guy, or maybe a dame. He watches, intent on the farthest corner of his vision, waiting to finally catch a glimpse of this thing that's been hunting him.

The muzzle of the gun disappears from his skin only to reappear in his line of sight, right at the side of his head. He can't focus too well at this angle, not without moving his head, so he waits. The ghost backs up a couple of paces, firmly out of reach, and steps in front of him, still keeping the gun aimed at his face.

For a second, his brain can't process what his eyes see, so it accepts the information in segments. A pair of boots, cracked and worn by the sun; denim, blasted by sand; the teddy bear he stole, its red ribbon trailing in the dust, dangling from a hand small enough to fit in his and still have room left over. A cloth bandage around a skinny bicep, the wound beneath seeping fresh blood through a rust colored stain.

And at the other end of the gun pointed at him, a kid. Dirty, and scraped, and hard looking, but a kid. Maybe ten years old.

He's been tracked across the desert, outsmarted and outgunned, by _a little girl._


	6. ...may your sorrows all be small...

“You're a fucking kid?” he blurts. His hands come away from his head and drop an inch or two in surprise. She squares her shoulders and firms up her grip on her gun, aiming it right between his eyes. She's far enough back that he can't grab for her before she'll put a bullet in his head; she's smart, he'll give her that much.

She tucks her teddy bear up under her free arm, the one with the bandage, but says nothing.

“Are you mute or something? Deaf?” When she still doesn't respond, he looks away from her and mutters angrily to himself, “Fuckin' ridiculous, me, at the mercy of some kid, _me_!”

“Shut up!” she snaps in a voice so high pitched it startles a laugh out of him. “I mean it!”

He stops laughing when she squeezes off a shot into the dirt a few feet from him.

“All right! Jeez!” He makes sure to put his hands back on his head so she don't get any ideas about shooting him full of new holes. “What the fuck is your problem, kid?”

“Some yellowbelly thief shot me.”

“ _Yellowbelly_?” The look on her face, the twitching finger on her gun's trigger, the way her arm tenses up like she's ready to blow his head off, stops the rant dead before he can dig himself in deeper. “Okay! I'm a yellowbelly. Just don't fuckin' shoot me.”

“Yellowbelly _thief_ ,” she insists. Her dark eyes flick down to the ragged brown bear at her side, then look back at his face, full of betrayal and accusation. Like she's sayin' _You took my bear,_ _you louse_ _. Who_ _ **does**_ _that?_ without a word.

“Yeah, well...” Benny says feebly, groping for some kind of witty comeback and finding nothing. If she was full grown, maybe he could find a justification for the theft. If he tried real hard, he could dig up some insult to hurl her way that preserves his dignity and lets him blame her for his actions— _W_ _hat'd the fuck you expect in a world like this, honesty?_ _You just fall off the t_ _urnip_ _truck yesterday or what?_ or maybe, _Ain't my fault you didn't secure your shit better_.

Unfortunately for his ego, there ain't nothin' to say that don't make him look like the bastard he is. He's the kind of guy who takes advantage of little girls just tryin' to get by in an unforgiving wasteland. Worse, he's the kind of guy who'd try to make it seem like her fault for bein' taken advantage of, if he could only think of a good enough excuse. 

But every nasty thing he could possibly come up with to point out how fuckin' naive she is to expect him not to do what he did, just makes him seem worse, and like an idiot besides. What's he going to say? What kind of loser keeps a teddy bear and makes their password _crackerjacks_? A kid. Who tinkers with toys and eats Sugar Bombs and snack cakes and leaves MREs untouched? A kid. Who leaves a crumb like him a stimpak and food and expects him not to rob 'em blind? _A kid_.

He should have realized what he was doing; the pieces were all there. Maybe he did, deep down, and just ignored the way they fit together. That, or he's just a dope.

“All right,” the words come out sullen, and he's got an uncomfortable twist in his gut that's too close to guilt for his liking, “so I'm a thief.”

She looks slightly mollified by the admission, but still sets her chin and demands, “Say you're sorry.”

“ _What_?” 

“Say. You're. Sorry.”

Well, the kid's got a gun on him. She might or might not be willing to use it as more than a threat, but he ain't willing to bet his life that a kid surviving out in the Mojave, _alone_ , is still innocent enough to be afraid to shoot. He could do a lot worse than apologize at a time like this. 

“I'm sorry I took your bear. I didn't think it would mean that much to you. All right?”

“Say you smell like feet.”

“Oh, now come on, kid—” Now she's just trying to humiliate him.

“Say it!”

Benny sighs and mutters out of the corner of his mouth, “I smell like feet.”

“Now say—“

There's a sudden clattering of rocks somewhere within earshot—off in the direction he'd been heading before this drama started to unfold. Benny's head whips around toward the sound, and too late he realizes he shouldn't have done that 'cause she might get spooked and blow a hole in his head. But he gets lucky. When he snaps to attention, straining to discern what's making that racket in the too-quiet canyon, so does the kid. 

“Jesus fuck—“ a reedy voice echoes off the canyon walls somewhere in the distance, far enough to not be a threat yet, but close enough for the potential, “there's a stack of skeletons over here!”

“Louder, Wyatt,” a second, harder voice snaps, “I don't think they heard you in fuckin' Juarez.”

“But Marcel—“

“ _Oh my fucking god_ would you just shut your fuckin' face, Wyatt?!” 

“But—“

“I'll stick a grenade in it, I swear to fuckin' god! All the way from Reno! 'But Marcel, there's radscorpions.' 'But Marcel, there's ghouls.' 'But Marceeeel, I've got a fuckin' PAPER CUT.'”

“Raiders,” the kid whispers. She looks mad enough to spit, which ain't just a symbolic gesture in the Mojave. Desert folk don't waste their moisture unless they mean it. But she also looks scared, a normal enough reaction for a kid looking to face a couple of guys who should have no problem shooting her down if they see a profit in it.

“Get in the shack.” Benny's already reaching for his gun. If it's just the two he can hear, he should have no problem making them see the error of their ways, and then he can send the kid home and they'll both move on with their lives.

Her pistol, which has been dipping as she tries to listen for the raiders' approach, snaps back up to point at his face.

“Don't!”

“Oh, come on, Ghost! You can either trust me, or you can trust _them_.”

She hesitates.

The voices are growing nearer, close enough to hear the shuffle of boots underneath the argument. “I lost my hand, Marcel!”

“To an infection, _from a fuckin' paper cut!”_

A rock bounces off a canyon wall, just close enough where he can see it—one of their visitors savagely kicked it. All at once, the color drains from the girl's face.

“If you double cross me...“ she says, but her voice shakes under those big, tough words.

 “Threats later,” Benny lurches forward to snatch his repeater out of the sand, “hiding now.”

The kid scrambles inside the shack. Benny's right on her heels. There's no time to grab his pack, and its guts are lyin' in the dirt 'cause she dumped 'em anyhow, which means no extra ammunition. Since he's got nothing left on him, he's limited to the seven shots already loaded into the rifle. He can make 'em count, though, and if the one with the whiny voice is missing a hand, that should make it go a little easier.

Benny puts his back to the wall beside the doorway and slides to the floor, nice and quiet, with his gun at the ready. His aching knees creak—kneeling for so long didn't do him any favors—but he can manage without much trouble, so long as this don't take an hour.

Meanwhile, the kid tucks herself into the only corner that'll let her see out the door in the direction the raiders are coming from. She finds a ragged canvas tarp, drags it around herself and burrows into it until there's just a small hole for her to see through. If he didn't know what he was lookin' for, he'd never even know she was there. She thinks tactically and knows how to keep a low profile. Rudimentary survival skills, sure, but more than he expected. He tries not to feel too impressed.

“You do know how to use that thing, don't you?” he asks, keeping his voice low. The kid shoots him an offended glare, something he can barely see from where she’s hidden.

“I shot _you_ , didn't I? Shot that MRE right out of your hand.”

“Yeah? And what were you aimin' for?”

“I hit what I was aiming for,” she says, with that kind of stubborn edge to her voice that tells him it’s a dirty lie.

Benny scoffs under his breath and turns aside to look out past the doorway. That’s the way she wants to play it? Fine. “Just stay out of the way, kid.”

“You stay out of _mine.”_

He doesn’t turn his head, but his eyes wander her direction for a moment after that huffy little mutter. 

Fuckin’ kids.

Outside, minutes later, there’s the telltale tromping of clumsy boots; one set of heavy footsteps for a man of too much armor and too much muscle, and a lighter, scuffling pair that’s uneven. A limp, maybe? Benny flattens himself against the wall. He strains to hear, to try and determine how far they are from the shack without peeking outside.

The lighter footfalls come to a stop. “The fuck happened here?” 

Benny winces at the sound of metal and glass clinking together, some of it shattering. The dipshit kicked the stimpaks. Probably broke half of ‘em. Fuck.

“Marcel...”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, _what_?”

“You think it’s a trap?”

Benny risks a glance around the edge of the doorway, then immediately retreats. Two raiders; a scruffy, skinny little guy with a pistol is picking over the ruins of his pack, and a big ugly cuss is standing over him with a shotgun braced on a handless arm. _That’s_ the thin voiced coward? He could eat Benny, the kid and half the shack and still have room left over for dessert.

He glances over at the kid again. She’s gone flatter, somehow, than she was before. No one would ever guess there was something under that tarp. Not unless they saw the end of the pistol just poking out of her peephole, wavering a little as she gets a bead on the cowardly giant.

Too late, he realizes what she’s going to do. He gestures frantically, but either she don’t see him, or she don’t care. 

_BANG._

There’s a shriek, followed by gunfire that flies wide enough to hit somewhere above the shack. Benny slaps his hand over his eyes, but removes it immediately. There’s no time to waste on that kind of shit, the raiders are going to get themselves together enough to fire right through the open doorway. 

Thinking fast, he makes a grab for the tarp, finds something that feels like an arm and yanks her to his side, in the shadow of the wall. It ain’t much cover, but it’s better than fuckin’ fabric.

Just in time, too. A hail of bullets and a single shotgun blast cascades through the doorway, cutting holes in every available surface. The shotgun shell makes a crater where the little shit’s head was not a moment before. 

The kid struggles out of the tarp—half on her back, ‘cause what he thought was an arm was a leg—and bares her teeth at him, angry. “I had it under control!” 

He points a finger at her and shakes it, like a fuckin’ schoolmarm. “We are _not_ talking about this right now!” 

She slaps his hand down, and he has to resist the urge to grab her and shake her. They don’t have time for that. He drags her around behind him where she won’t be in his way, and gets his rifle up and ready for when the raiders come through the door.

So of course the big guy kicks down the _wall_ right by Benny’s head.

Without thinking about it, he shelters the kid with his body while rotting wood crashes down on them. It kicks up dust and sand and mold, and the raider keeps kicking away at the shack with a steel toed boot until there’s hardly anything left to hold up the other side of it. His gun gets knocked out of his hand and is lost in the shuffle. Great.

When the big guy finally stops, they’re buried under at least a couple inches of debris. There are chips of wood snaking their way down the neck of Benny’s suit, and splinters in his hair. But the kid is still breathing in the circle of his arms, with her head tucked up tight underneath his chin and the rest of her rolled into a ball.

“I got ‘em, Marcel!” the big guy cries, and starts hefting the wood off Benny’s back. He can’t reach the repeater, but the kid’s still got her pistol somewhere. Unless she dropped it when he yanked her over. Shit.

“Well, whoop-de-fuckin’-do! What d'you want, a medal?”

Sunlight cracks their cover when the last of the rubble is pulled away. Cool metal hits the back of Benny’s head for the second time today, but it’s a shotgun barrel. The kid’s pistol is feeling downright quaint in comparison.

“Don’t try anything funny,” the big guy says. “Turn around.”

Benny steels himself, takes a couple of deep breaths, and straightens up. Not enough to stand yet, but enough to reveal the back of his vault suit, and show the big guy his face. He takes that in, but loses interest in Benny when he gets a glimpse at the girl.

The shotgun barrel droops. “Ah, jeez, Marcel, it’s just some vaultie and his kid.” 

“Yeah, and?” Marcel doesn’t care, but this big one is looking down at them like they’re something he wants to adopt.

That’s...unexpected. Benny shifts position a little more, and feels the suit pull against his skin. Some vaultie and his kid, huh? This fucking raider who’s the size of a stunted super mutant is radiating sympathy because he thinks Benny’s some wide-eyed hole-in-the-ground yokel who’s never seen the sky.

He tries to put on that slack-jawed expression he’s seen on some of the vault-born tourists on the Strip. 

“Just—just don’t hurt my little girl.” It’s worth a shot. They look just similar enough to maybe be related. She’s got dark hair and eyes like him, even if her roots don’t reach Mexico’s direction the way his do.

The kid squirms under him, obviously surprised, and he gives her a quick poke to warn her to keep quiet. He can see he’s hit just the right note. The big guy fuckin’ _melts_ with pity.

“Aw, Mar _cel_ , I can’t!”

The girl throws her arms around Benny’s neck—one hand still full of teddy bear—and bursts into tears. “Please don’t kill my daddy!”

The kid’s a natural. If they get out of this alive...well, he won’t act too impressed, but he’ll let her know she’s _adequate_.

The skinny one—Marcel—limps up behind the big guy. He’s got a gun in one hand, but the arm it’s attached to is bleeding from a hole in his shoulder that he’s keeping pressure on with the other. “For fuck’s sake, Wyatt, I’m shot! Get out of the way, I’ll fuckin’ do it!” 

With big, watery eyes under a heavy brow, Wyatt steps aside. Loyalty trumps pity, it seems, but he doesn’t look very happy about it. 

Benny pats the girl on the back. She sobs harder, really laying it on thick, and gingerly holds out her teddy bear to her _gunshot victim_. “Please, mister! You can take my bear instead. His name is Mister Stuffington!”

Wyatt turns those cap-wide eyes on his partner and repeats, in a strangled whisper, “ _Mister Stuffington_.”

“Fuck Mister Stuffington! I’m bleeding!” He aims his gun straight at the pair of them. He seems to be having some trouble keeping it steady, what with the shoulder wound, but at this range, there’s still not much chance he’ll miss. 

Benny shifts around again, checking his position. He’s still half buried in debris from the wall. And crouched on the ground, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to disarm and overpower the guy, even if Wyatt doesn’t decide to stop him the minute he looks like he’s putting up a fight.

So he pulls the kid close to him and holds her tight.

“Sweetie—” The word sounds clunky coming out of his mouth, but it’s too late to take it back. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be with Mommy soon.”

Wyatt’s face crumples up so much, it looks like the corners of his mouth are going to slide down clean off the bottom of his chin. 

“Marcel, she lost her mom!”

Marcel’s gun weaves in the air and falters when he looks at the kid, then at his partner. “You’re gonna be fuckin’ impossible to live with if I shoot ‘em, aren’t you? Fuck!"

After another few tense moments of Benny bein' face to face with a loaded gun and a sobbing kid in his arms, Marcel finally drops his arm and steps away, steaming. Wyatt’s face stops dripping with sympathy and perks up like a dog with a bone.

The giant holsters his shotgun in a sling on his back, and offers one massive hand to the kid. “It’s okay, I’m sorry I scared you.” 

Marcel makes an argumentative noise, and Benny has to work hard to keep from laughing his ass off. He ain’t wrong to be pissed off, even if it’s to Benny’s advantage. He’s traveling in a wasteland with a giant who’s gentle _and_ a coward. This ain’t likely to be the first skirmish the two of ‘em have had over something like this.

“I’m Wyatt,” he says, while her chin trembles. “What’s your name?”

She tries to hand him her bear, because damn does this kid have her tactics down but good, but he refuses it and takes her hand instead. “M-my name is T-tommy.”

He lifts her out of the debris like she weighs nothing at all and sets her on her feet. “And your daddy?”

Another angry, grumbling noise from Marcel’s direction, and the scatter of a few small rocks being kicked. 

“Um...” the kid says, casting her eyes Benny’s direction. He’s half struggling out of what’s left of the shack, but Wyatt pulls him out the rest of the way. When he’s standing she runs to him and throws her arms around his middle. She jabs him in the side to prompt him to give a name she ain’t got. “Daddy!”

“Benny,” he says to Wyatt, awkwardly patting her on the shoulder.

There’s more stomping and rock kicking and cussing off in the background.

Wyatt gives them a sheepish look, says, “I’m gonna go get Marcel to cool off.” and excuses himself.

When they’re a little more alone, the kid pulls back to stare at him, and the father-daughter act slips just enough for her to glare at him.

“I coulda got ‘em both, _Benny,_ ” she spits, like his name tastes bad.

“You almost got us killed, _Tommy_ ,” he answers, with the same derision.

And just like that, they’re introduced. 


	7. ...here's to the losers, bless them all...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Advisories for this chapter** : the usual problematic language (ableism, etc.), body-shaming, offscreen violence/death. Also, some very brief sexual references.

While they’re quietly arguing about fifteen feet away, Benny watches Wyatt and Marcel—careful to make sure he doesn’t _look_ like he’s watching. The exchange is heated, the way you’d expect from a couple of wasteland raiders, but it’s got a layer of friendly bickering instead of the usual animosity.

These two ain’t strangers who hooked up as mercenaries, they’re pals; close enough they’d never stick a knife in each other. He can’t quite figure the dynamic beyond that, though. Are they old tribal friends? Brothers? Lovers?

Well, it don’t much matter. The big one is on their side, at least for now, and he’s got pull with the smart one. If Benny can keep it that way, nobody will be getting any new holes blasted in ‘em.

When he’s sure they ain’t lookin’, Benny snatches the kid by the arm and drags her a few feet to put a little more distance between them and the raiders. Not too far, though. They don’t want too much attention on themselves until he’s sure Marcel is satisfied. She glares daggers at him and yanks her arm out of his grasp—also careful to make sure they’re not watching.

“Jerk” she hisses, and only then does he realize he just grabbed her by the bullet wound. Fuck.

“Stuff it, kid,” he says, instead of apologizing like he would if he was a better guy. They haven’t got time for niceties.

She smiles at him, adoringly, and that’s all he needs to see to know that Wyatt and Marcel are looking their way. He mirrors her expression and ruffles her hair. When her grin falls off like a leaf dropping off a tree, he knows they’re free from scrutiny.

“You’re doin’ all right so far,” Benny whispers. “Give or take a little _shooting at them_.” He ignores her little irritated huff. “Keep it up and we’ll both get through this.”

“I could sneak off, then you could handle this on your own.” She wants it to be a threat, so Benny gives her a wounded look.

“Throw me to he wolves, why don’t ya? But if you were really gonna do it, you wouldn’t have warned me first.”

The kid looks indignant, but she can’t seem to think up a good argument, so she snaps her mouth shut and just looks at him.

“That was good thinking, offering that bear,” he admits. “Try to keep it up where they can see it.”

Without a word, she hitches “Mister Stuffington” up so her chin is resting on its fuzzy little head.

“And wipe your face,” Benny adds. “Vaulties don’t run around covered in dirt.”

She raises a hand to scrub at the wrong cheek. With an inward grumble, Benny uses his sleeve to try to clean her up a little. She tries to turn her head away. Doggedly, he follows her around in a half circle until he’s able to get rid of the worst of the smudges. Now he has a view of their raider pals, coming to the end of their argument; Wyatt looks happy, so Benny’s happy, too. The kid, though, just keeps trying to burn holes through him with her eyes.

“So, is this silent treatment supposed to hurt my feelings?” he asks. “‘Cause it ain’t much of a punishment.”

“Vault dwellers,” she tells him primly, “don’t say ‘ain’t.’”

“All right, fair point. But just remember, vault kids obey their parents.”

“Vault dads don’t shoot—“

“They’re looking,” he interrupts.

“I love you, Daddy!” She launches herself at him and throws her arms around his neck. He almost topples over. His back ain’t meant to support a kid wrapped around him like a creeping vine, no matter how skinny.

“That line ain’t gonna work forever,” he tries to say, but she’s nuzzling into his shoulder and the wind is blowing her hair straight into his mouth, so he’s left spitting it out while he tries to talk.

“Don’t say _ain’t_!” she stage-whispers in his ear. She’s right to remind him of the slip, but he’s got bigger problems. The raiders are heading their way.

“All right, sweetheart,” Benny says, not quite at the top of his voice, but loud enough for their new friends to hear. “Time to get down. Dad’s back a—isn’t what it used to be.”

She slips from his arms with an impressive pout, but there’s something smug in her eyes because he corrected his grammar. “Sorry, Daddy.”

“Aw, lookit ‘em, Marcel.” Wyatt elbows Marcel in the side, and knocks him a little off balance while they wander up. “Cute as buttons.”

“Buttons,” Marcel mutters, just loud enough for Benny to hear. “Fucking buttons. Fucking bears. Fucking. Fuck.”

* * *

Half an hour later, with the sun sinking, they’re sitting around a campfire, while Benny patches up Marcel with “some of that good vaultie medicine ‘cause it’s the _least_ you can fuckin’ do.”

“She didn’t mean to shoot you,” Benny says while he winds a bandage around Marcel’s wound. Technically, not a lie. She meant to shoot Wyatt first.

“I thought you were after us,” the kid puts in. She’s still sniffling artistically. But now it’s got a run-of-the-mill snot-nosed-kid kind of vibe instead of a near-hysterical-kid kind of vibe. “Somebody shot me, see?” And she shows off her bandaged arm, throwing a significant glance at Benny while she does it. They’ll be picking up right where they left off just as soon as they get a chance, he’s sure.

“Aww, poor little thing!” Wyatt croons. Marcel rolls his eyes.

“So fuckin’ what? It’s a scratch.”

“But she’s scared, Marcel.”

“And why shouldn’t she be? Ow! Watch what you’re fuckin’ doin’.”

Benny loosens up with the gauze and keeps any uncharitable thoughts about this ‘raider’s’ toughness to himself. “Sorry.”

“Hey, wanna see something funny?” Wyatt asks, giving the kid such a disarming grin she can’t help smiling back. Hers is thin and nervous—she’s still scared, Benny can see that much ain’t just an act. But she’s quick, and she knows what angles to play so she tips her face up to the big man and does her best imitation of a wide eyed innocent who _wants_ to trust.

Wyatt leans out over the campfire and twists his hand into a shape that looks like it hurts. The shadow, thrown against a nearby rock, starts to take form as something other than a lump. The kid gasps.

“A dog!” she claps her hands, laying it on pretty thick, but her enthusiasm makes Wyatt happy.

“Fuckin’ shadow puppets,” Marcel grumbles. “Can’t shoot for shit, but god _damn_ it, the man can still do this useless bullshit.”

“You used to like my shadow puppets,” Wyatt whines.

“ _You_ used to have two hands! Things change!”

“I think it’s neat,” the kid whispers, and Wyatt grins again.

“See, Marcel? _She_ thinks it’s neat.”

Marcel scoffs at that, but says nothing else. Benny would laugh with open scorn if it wouldn’t risk his neck. There’s something so damn ridiculous about a raider the size of a small deathclaw makin’ shadow puppets for a kid and bustin’ his partner’s chops. How the fuck did these two get so far in the desert without dyin’? ‘Cause if he was in Marcel’s shoes, he’d have put two in Wyatt’s head long before he got the chance to make buddy-buddy with some brat and her fuckin’ teddy bear.

“You fuckin’ done?” Marcel asks, eyeing Benny’s handiwork with a jerk of his head. Meanwhile Wyatt’s makin’ a new shape with his hand and sayin’ “Quack.”

Coolly, Benny straightens up the edges of the gauze and tucks it in real nice, trying to make it look more artful than it is. The wrapping’s a little better than your average tribal would do, but it’s hard to believe a hardened raider would buy it as real vaultie healing. “All set.”

Marcel yanks his arm free and feels around the bandage, undoing some of the neatness. “It’ll do. I guess. So long as my arm don’t fuckin’ rot and fall off. It ain’t gonna rot and fall off, right, vault boy?” He jabs Benny in the chest hard with his index finger and it takes a lot of willpower not to snatch his hand to bend his fingers the wrong way. “If it does, I swear to fuckin’ god I’ll pick it up and fuckin’ beat you with it.”

“Gosh,” Benny says, trying to keep his expression blank and to sound like Sarah Weintraub, who happens to be the only vaultie he’s ever spoken to for longer than a minute. Most of what she had to say was along the lines of _oh Benny, oh yes, oh gee_ , but he does remember the sound of her accent. “Aren’t you just awfully creative, then?”

Wyatt’s moved on to doin’ a butterfly, but he’s apologizing to the kid while he flutters his fingers ‘cause he ain’t got both hands to do it properly anymore. She looks entranced by the show, nodding and giving him all the encouragement she can muster—“Yeah, my mom showed me pictures of butterflies once, that looks just like half of one—”

“Aw, gee, I’m sorry,” Wyatt says, face falling. “I didn’t mean to remind you—“

“Oh, Jesus,” Marcel stops payin’ Benny any mind and rolls his head on his neck, “here it fuckin’ comes.”

“I lost my mama, too,” Wyatt says, his whole face quivering with sorrow. “A long time ago. It must be real hard on you.”

Marcel grumbles something; the only words that come out clear are “mama” and “fuck.” At that, Benny stifles a smile behind a strategically placed hand and a gentle cough, but the kid gets a look on her face that makes his humor dry right up like a drop of water in the noonday sun. It’s distant, and sad, and a lot more genuine than she wants to let on.

The kid nods, and murmurs with a little too much feeling for it to be anything but real, “Yeah.”

“How’d you all end up out here, anyhow?” Wyatt asks. “If I had a vault to live in, I’d never leave it.”

Oh, shit. They ain’t had time to go over a backstory, and who even knows if she’s got one cooked up that’ll sound like anything but total bullshit. Benny opens his mouth, even though he ain’t sure what to say, he just knows he ought to keep her from putting her foot in it, or at the very least getting him into trouble with some creative storytelling about his ‘parenting.’ “Kiddo—“

For the first time in fifteen minutes, she meets his eyes. Defiant, almost, daring him to try and keep her from saying anything. “I can tell it, Daddy.”

Benny’s lips thin, and he tries to plead with his eyes. Not that she gives a damn. “I don’t think that’s a good idea—Pumpkin.”

“Please, Daddy?” she says sweetly, with a spark of mocking in her expression that he hopes the raiders don’t pick up on. She’s enjoying watching him squirm—holding the narrative in her hands while he can do fuck all about it. “Please let me tell it?”

“ _Honey_...”

“Oh, let her talk, mister,” Wyatt says earnestly. “You might think it’s better for her not to talk about her mom, but it’s not good to keep that kinda thing all bottled up inside.” He turns those big ol’ eyes on Marcel, almost accusingly.

“What the fuck are you looking at me for?” Marcel snaps. “Tell your fucking story, kid. Everybody shut up and listen.” He frowns at Wyatt. “Fuckin’ happy now?”

Benny sighs and waves for her to go ahead, not that it fucking matters what he says one way or another. He’s outnumbered.

The kid ducks her head, like she’s gone bashful all of a sudden, and then straightens up. “It’s a long story.”

Oh, good. Benny settles back on his rock and tries to get comfortable. Marcel starts digging around in his pockets—first for a cigarette, then for a match. And Wyatt—the eager dope—nods, encouraging her to continue.

“Well, we lived in a vault,” she says, just halting enough for it to sound like she’s reluctant, not like she’s making anything up. “Me and mom. And Daddy, of course.”

Aw, like he’s an afterthought. Real nice. This is off to a great start. Benny steals a jealous glance at Marcel’s cigarette. He doesn’t dare ask for one, not if he’s going to play a good and proper vaultie. So he just looks at the glowing tip and silently lusts after it.

“We probably never would have left the vault, but...” Something in her face changes, that same sad, true something that shone through the cracks before, and her voice goes lower. “There was a girl about my age, she found us. A wasteland girl. She was an orphan. Annie.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Benny knows Little Orphan Annie from the funny papers. Sure, he ain’t seen a comic starring her since he was a kid, but she couldn’t have picked some other name? He spares her a warning look, but the kid ignores him. And Marcel and Wyatt don’t show any sign of recognition, so that’s good.

“She got into the vault, through a back way. She hid from us for awhile, in the ducts and things, but we found her. She was so scared. She’d been alone for a really long time. Months and months.”

The kid’s telling a story that sounds plausible. A wasteland girl who found a vault and hid inside? It ain’t too hard to figure out who this mysterious “Annie” is based on. She’s smart enough to keep a kernel of truth in her fictions, even if the names are changed. The mark of a decent con artist, Benny thinks with inward appreciation and a silent sigh of relief. It’s easier to keep your stories straight if they ain’t a hundred percent lie.

“Oh...” Wyatt rumbles sadly. “That’s too bad.”

“Annie told us her mom was a farmer.” There’s truth in this, too. Benny hears it. “They were happy too, like us...but she got killed and raiders took over the homestead. So the girl ran.”

“And found you.”

“Yeah...” The kid swallows and looks down at her feet. “Mom said we should help her. She was that kind of person, you know. Good. She said we should help Annie get back home. Make sure she got her farm back. Give—“ her voice catches like a rusty hinge, “give her mom a proper burial.”

“Aww,” Wyatt quavers, and Benny snaps out of the haze of sympathy that’s been stealing over him. The kid spins a good yarn, that’s all. Tugs at the heartstrings like one of those sticky-sweet old timey songs. But it ain’t like it’s anything to do with him.

“Getting her buried was pretty important to this kid,” he puts in, trying to hint to the girl that she’s supposed to be a vaultie and shouldn’t be used to burying the dead. She catches on quick enough, and nods.

“They do that up here, Annie told me so.” Her voice is steadier now. “So we packed up some supplies and headed for the surface. Only we didn’t count on how hard it would be to find water out here.” Good, she’s getting herself into the right mindset now, thinking about what a vaultie _should_ know. “We walked so far, and we were so tired and thirsty, and then we found a big building right in the middle of an abandoned town—what were they called, where you could go in and buy all kinds of things? There were clothes, and toys, and furniture?”

Department store, Benny knows, but he keeps his mouth shut. He knows there’s never been one of those inside a vault.

“Strip mall?” Wyatt guesses. Eh, close enough.

“Yeah, that must be it. We thought we might be able to find something in there, so me and Mom and Annie went in...”

Both the raiders turn to Benny, and the kid bites her lip as she realizes she’s left him out of the story.

“You let them go alone?” Marcel seems angry, like he’s taking the supposed abandonment of the wife and kids a little too personal. Wyatt just looks disappointed.

“Oh, Daddy had to stay behind,” the kid says hastily. “We were hoping to find some medicine—because—he was sick with—”

“Priapism.” He heard that word from a Follower once. No idea what kind of disease it is, but it sounds plenty impressive. And anything’s better than letting her flounder.

“’Zat bad?” Marcel asks, getting drawn into this little drama whether he wants to or not. “What is it?”

Benny cringes, clutches his arms around himself and shakes a little, reliving horrible memories he ain’t really got. “You don’t want to know.”

Marcel leans back on his rock, swaying away from Benny like he’s started to put off a radioactive glow. “It’s not contagious, is it?”

With a haunted, vacant look, Benny whispers, “Not anymore.”

The kid covers her mouth with her hand and looks away. It’s a good impression of being horrified or traumatized, but he can tell she’s hiding a giggle. “You’re not in any danger. He already shed the scales.”

“Scales? Fuckin’ _scales_?” Marcel stands up and crosses to the other side of the campfire to sit down next to Wyatt. He shoots an accusing glare at his partner. “Y’had to make friends with a god damn frog man, didn’t you, you big oaf?”

“Finish the story,” Wyatt says, glaring at Marcel for interrupting the kid with dramatics. “Please?”

“Well...Daddy was so sick, we were afraid he might _die_.” She smiles at Benny. He bares his teeth at her. _Cute_ fuckin’ kid. Cute as a radscorpion with mange. “So we went looking for whatever we could find, only we didn’t know the building was full of big green mutants.” She shudders, clutching her teddy bear close to her chest.

“Super mutants,” Wyatt gasps. He’s so caught up in the story, a deathclaw could come up behind him and he’d never notice. Marcel is interested, too, but he keeps darting suspicious glances Benny’s way—checking for scales.

“We tried to get back out without them seeing us,” the kid says, dropping her voice to a near-whisper so they all have to lean closer and pay attention. “But then—” She squeezes her eyes shut, like she’s too overcome by the memory to go on.

“They got her, huh?”

The kid sniffles and buries her face in her teddy bear’s back, nodding all the while.

“Oh, gee,” Wyatt says, fishing around in his pockets until he finds a handkerchief to offer the kid.

She takes the ragged piece of cloth and pulls herself together with a big show. The kid looks up at Wyatt and Marcel—even he’s looking sympathetic now—with big, tearful eyes.

“When we couldn’t get out of the building, we split up and tried to hide, but it was no use. They’re so strong, super mutants! They just started picking things up and throwing them. Big appliances!” She blows her nose and wails, “Mom and Annie...they never even saw the fridge coming!”

Benny can’t smother his laugh in time, so he throws his hands over his face and tries to make it sound like a brokenhearted sob. He hears a big, wet sniffle from Wyatt.

“Oh...you poor little girl. And right in front of you, too! It’s just awful, ain’t it, Marcel?”

“Yeah,” Marcel says curtly. He stares at the fire for a second like he wants to kick it. Then his shoulders slump and he whispers, “My mom went the same way.”

The kid looks at him with obvious sympathy. “Super mutants?”

“No,” Marcel’s chin wobbles, “fridge.”

* * *

They spend the rest of the evening like that, chatting around the campfire until it’s time to sleep. Benny and the kid spin more stories about vault life, helping each other out here and there with the particulars so it all sounds cohesive.

Benny mostly talks about the grownup stuff, the survival-in-the-desert stuff, picking and choosing stories from his own past to make it real. In between, the kid sketches a portrait of her mom with bits and pieces of her quirks and flaws, all of them too unvarnished to be anything but the truth. Benny even shows off Miss Schwartz in her obvious vault setting and claims it’s his wife, to the kid’s disgust. She talks about ‘Annie’s’ life on the farm, too, with the kind of mundane detail that only comes from experience. He picks up on some more reality showing through the top layer of those stories about that fictitious little wasteland girl—the one whose mother went off to run an errand in town and never came back. A mother whose body was left somewhere out in the wilderness to rot without a proper burial.

Wyatt and Marcel tell their own origin story while the night winds down. They’re stepbrothers and ex-bighorner ranchers, who got tired of having their herds rustled out from under them. Marcel got it into his head he could be a big tough mercenary; Wyatt went along to make sure he didn’t get his stupid self killed. It ain’t working out too well for ‘em, but they’re at least wringing some kind of life out of the Mojave.

(And Marcel’s mother, as it turns out, got locked _in_ a fridge instead of squashed _by_ one. Suffocated hiding from a deathclaw.)

In the morning, when the campfire’s cold, they pack up. The kid is scooped up in a hug by the giant, Marcel flicks her nose, and they all shake hands like civilized people.

It’s fuckin’ surreal to be waving goodbye with a kid on his arm as the two raiders drift out of sight, heading out of the canyon the way Benny came in. But, here they are.

Once he’s sure their company is long gone, Benny pulls his arm out of her grip and puts some space between the two of ‘em. She twists away at the same moment, jabbing at the air between them with the combat knife that should have been sheathed at his waist.

“All right, ‘daddy,’ keep your hands where I can see ‘em.”

Point in the kid’s favor: she’s slick enough to get his knife without him noticing. Point against her: she looks like she barely knows which end of it to hold. Threats are worse than useless if you can’t make the other guy _believe_ you can follow through.

“Ever used one of those before?” Benny asks, and then he has a short wait while she tries to decide if she should take offense that he’s not afraid of her.

Finally, she gives him a sullen “no” and starts to lower her weapon.

“Kid, what are you doing?” He asks. Her mouth gapes open in confusion and surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know anything? If you only have one weapon, and somebody asks you if you knows how to use it, you say yes!”

“But you can _tell...”_ she starts.

“So convince me I’m wrong. Come on, tell me, ‘Yeah, I stabbed a guy in Reno, and I’d do it again, too.’”

“I’ve never been to Reno. It’s a den of vice,” she says. Jesus Christ, she does need help.

“Act like you have,” he says. “Folks’ll take you a lot more seriously if you went to Reno by yourself and came out alive.”

“Oh. Okay. I...” She drops her gaze so she’s looking at something in the neighborhood of his armpit, and stutters out, “I s-stabbed a guy in—“

“No, _wrong,_ ” he says, sharp enough to startle her into looking up. “You look me in the eye when you lie to me. The only ones who look away are the ones who have something to hide.”

“But you already know it’s not true,” the kid insists.

“So make me doubt what I know. Look, you conned those raiders all right. It ain’t like you don’t know how. Or would you have crumpled like this the minute one of them challenged you?”

She looks him right in the eye and spits, “No.” Benny laughs.

“See, kid? That’s a lie I could almost believe.”

“It’s not a lie.” Her mouth puckers up into a sour pout.

“Sure, kid.” She has to learn to quit while she’s ahead, but he doesn’t have time to stick around and teach her _everything_. “So what was the knife for? You wanted to threaten me?” he asks like they’re making polite conversation in the Ultra-Luxe lounge.

“No, I wanted to stab you.”

“With that grip?” He reaches over and takes the knife right out of her hands before she can stop him. “First thing you need to know about using a knife: don’t let your enemy take it from you. Now where were you planning on doing it? Here?” he guesses, tapping two fingers at the likeliest spot, at his side, a tempting target of vault-suit-blue where there’s no leather to turn the blade. It’s also the easiest place to reach from her lofty lack of height. He doesn’t have to wait for her to confirm it. “Tell me what you think happens after you stab me.”

“You die.” She doesn’t hesitate over that, at least. She’s fuckin’ smug about it, matter of fact.

“I might,” he tells her, “if you had the skill to stick it between the ribs. Which you don’t. So you thrust—“ he demonstrates in the empty air. “And bounce right off the bone, ‘cause you ain’t strong enough to break it.” His thrust turns into an upward slash. “The shock of hitting something that solid goes right through your arm, and you let go of the knife. You can’t help it. Me, I’m cut up enough to bleed a little, and it hurts enough I want to get me some payback, but it ain’t near enough to put me down. _And_ I have your knife. So what happens you you?”

“I...get stabbed?” she says, staring at the knife, like she’s pretty sure she’s naming her immediate future.

In one fluid motion, he tosses the knife out of her reach and swings his repeater down from over his shoulder to point right at her middle.

“You get shot, kid. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.”

She straightens up to her full height, stubborn and proud as ever, and meets his eyes head on. “So that’s how it is, huh? Fine. You’re still mad I got the drop on you? Go ahead. Shoot me.”

Benny scoffs and waves her off. “Don’t flatter yourself, kid. You ain’t worth the waste of bullets.”

He swings the repeater back up over his shoulder and settles it on his back where it belongs. He’s already all packed up, ain’t no point hanging around anymore, so he gives her a little goodbye salute and starts to walk off. He picks up the knife from where he tossed it as he goes.

She calls after him, “But I’m worth a lecture?”

“Barely. Consider it friendly advice, one wastelander to another,” he snaps back, hitching his pack higher on his shoulders. “Now do me a favor and scram. You got what you wanted. You go your way, I’ll go mine, and we can pretend this never happened.”

He heads north, the way he was going before it all started to come undone, and doesn’t look back.

“You’re still a thief!” she shouts after him, furious that he won’t turn around. “And you smell like feet!”

“Well, you oughtta know.”

“I hate you!” He can hear her stomp her foot in the sand somewhere behind him.

Benny waves his arm over his head. “Feeling’s mutual, kid!”

* * *

Three hours later, he’s still not out of the canyon. He’s making good time, considering how much he’s carrying, and he ain’t seen another living soul since he left the kid behind. But he still can’t shake the feeling he’s bein’ watched. All those hours in the vault with a “Ghost” following him have made him downright paranoid.

Benny comes to a stop and leans up against one of the rock walls to take some pressure off his feet. He’s sweating hard, but he’s thankful just the same. It’d be so much worse if he was wearing anything thicker than a vault suit.

Pulling the bag from his shoulders, Benny rummages around inside for a bottle of water. Pops the cap, throws his head back, chugs half of it. It hits his stomach like a fist, and he’d laugh at himself if he wasn’t busy gasping his way through the cramps. He knows better than to be careless with his water in this heat. It’s the novelty of having so much of it. Thank god he fell into that vault, even if it was haunted by a pipsqueak.

He drops to the ground in the shadow of the wall, slowly, stretching himself out as he goes. He’s got no urgent need to be any particular place for a while yet; might as well take a rest. He adjusts himself, gets his gun situated in his lap, and leans back with a contented sigh. He can afford a short break; maybe even catch a twenty-minute nap in the shade before he continues on.

Benny lets his eyes slide closed and breathes deep.

He doesn’t even realize he dropped off to sleep until somebody slaps him across the face. He comes to, fumbling for his gun, blinking rapidly, and finds the kid—the kid he thought he’d left behind—staring at him.

“Oh,” she says with a derisive sniff, “Thought you were dead.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, kid.” He runs a hand over his face to wake himself up. The other hand’s still holding his rifle, although he doesn’t point it at her. If he did, he’d be tempted to pull the trigger.

“You snore like a dying brahmin,” she tells him. Yeah, there it is, he’s tempted already.

“Can’t a guy even sit down and rest his eyes without _you_ sneaking up on him every five minutes? What do you want?”

“From you? Nothing. You’re in my way.”

“Oh, _pardon me_.” He moves his legs to the side so she won’t have to step over him to get past, and makes a gesture for her to move along.

She just looks at him, pressing her lips together while she turns a few thoughts over in her head.

“Well?” he prompts. “You gonna stand there and stare at me all day, or do you want to get going?”

“I don’t want to look at you and your stupid face. I was just wondering what you’d have done if I shot you in your sleep. I could have done it.”

“Yeah? With what gun?”

“My pistol, what do you think?”

“Which is…?” He looks at her empty hands, then at her waist where she could have belted on a holster, but hasn’t.

“It’s in my...pack...” She goes pale as he tilts the repeater up so the barrel points in her direction, and she realizes she won’t have time to get to her weapon before him if he decides to pull the trigger. “Oh.”

“You’d better get while the gettin’s good, kid,” he says, jabbing the gun her direction.

“You won’t shoot. You’re too yellowbelly to shoot. If you were gonna, you’d have done it before. Besides,” she says haughtily, “I don't have to listen to some old fat guy.”

 _Old fat guy_? That hits him somewhere right in the vanity. “And I don't have to sit here and be insulted by some smart mouthed _kid_.”

“I'm not a kid!”

“Awful short to be anything else.”

“You're a jerk.”

“You're damn right I am,” he says, “so it follows that _little girls_ should not be following me.”

“I'm not following _you_.” She gestures around at the rock walls. “What was I gonna do, go the other way, follow those stooges? Maybe go back to the vault? It ain’t safe there anymore, not after _you_ broke in. There’s only one way to go, and it’s this way. Unless you’ve got any better ideas.”

He frowns at that. She’s got a point. Several of ‘em. He don’t feel too bad about busting into the vault, not given the life-and-death circumstances that put him there, but it sure says something that she’s willing to abandon all the stuff she gathered just because she don’t feel safe there anymore.

“Well?”

“I'm thinkin'!” he snarls.

“Don't hurt yourself, old man,” she says dryly.

“Why, you little brat!” Not the best thing to say to a kid who thinks he's old, but it takes him by surprise. Nobody's ever called him that before. “Why don’t you go find some _new_ vault? Or get those raiders to adopt you. Tell ‘em Daddy’s priapism came back and you’re all alone in the world.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” she mutters. There’s that sadness in her eyes again. It should make him feel bad, knowing she’s been alone for a good long time, and probably scared to death for most of it. “Anyway, I’m not going to live with the raiders,” she says. “They’re even more useless than you. And I got stuff to do.”

“Like going back to the farm? Giving Mom a proper burial?” he says snidely, intentionally poking at the spots he figures are sorest.

“You—you shut up!” She turns partly away from him. Not the smartest thing she could do when he’s got a gun pointed at her, but she’s real focused on saving face. The kid kicks her toe in the sand and sulks, “And I don’t know where her body is, anyway. But I _am_ going back to the farm.” She throws him a nasty look over her shoulder. “You’re right about that.”

Well, that’s just crazy talk. If half of what she told them over the campfire is true, the farm is crawling with raiders, all of ‘em armed to the teeth. And they won’t be the kind with secret soft sides, like Marcel and Wyatt. Benny lowers the repeater.

“I’m going back to the farm,” she says firmly, “and I’m taking it back.”

Benny laughs hoarsely, and starts getting to his feet. “And what’s your plan, kid, annoy them to death? Knock on the door all, ‘ _Vault-Tec calling_!”? You won’t get within a mile before they drop you like a wet sack of crap.”

“Shut up! I caught you by surprise,” she says, folding her arms over her chest. “A bunch of times. And I beat you, too! If it wasn’t for those raiders I’d have killed you. And if I can do it to you, I can do it to them. Sure, they’re in better shape and you’re an old fatso—”

“Hey!”

“But I can do it.” She sets her shoulders and turns back to face him now that he’s standing. “And I’m gonna do it.”

Benny rolls his eyes. “You’re gonna get yourself killed is what you’re gonna do.”

“What do you care?”

“I don’t!”

“Good!” She stomps past him now that he’s not blocking the way with his body even a little bit. “I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”

“Your shoulder's all chip, you know that, short stack?” he calls to her back.

She throws a hand up behind herself and flips him off. Oh, real nice.

“Little menace,” he mutters, and starts after her. Not because he’s following her, but because there’s no other way to fuckin’ go. He’s stuck behind her, watching her back, for a good ten minutes because the canyon’s tight here and it slows him down.

But, even so, his legs are longer than hers. He overtakes her pretty soon, though she’s moving at a pretty good clip and is more agile than he is when it comes to jumping over rocks and scrub. By the time he reaches her side, her posture’s changed: her shoulders rounded off into a slump, her walk more of a slouch, her head down so her face is hidden by her hair.

“Ah, jeez, kid,” Benny says, even though he sure as fuck don’t want to notice. “You cryin'?”

The kid shakes her head so hard it ought to come off, but her shoulders start jumping up and down like she's sobbing. She's silent, at least, and if not for the shaking, he might believe her.

Benny runs his fingers through his hair and lets his rifle drag a little in the sand. For fuck's sake.

“Hey,” he says awkwardly.

“Go away!”

“I will as soon as I can,” he promises. “Looks like we’re stuck with each other for now, though. I can’t exactly go back and ask Marcel and Wyatt to adopt _me_.”

She makes a sound that ain’t quite a laugh.

Benny never did know much about kids, but he can see he’s been acting like a real crumb, treating her like she’s as tough as she acts. She’s a little girl, and he made her cry. Even he can find it in him to feel bad about that. Somewhat.

“How many raiders are there on that farm of yours?” he asks. The kid turns enough to show him one red-rimmed eye before she whips her face away.

“I don’t know. Six, maybe seven. It was dark.”

“They came in the night?” He can picture it: the kid snug in her bed, safe and happy, waiting for a mother who was never coming home, until the raiders come pouring over the hill to burn the crops, stampede the brahmin, and tear the house apart. And he can imagine the kid getting away unseen—she _is_ good—traumatized but still in one piece, and running as far and as fast as her spindly little legs would take her.

“What do you care?” she asks again, but this time she’s coming across as vulnerable instead of petulant.

“Didn’t say I _cared_. But you gotta figure, if it’s a good place, more of ‘em might have moved in since you left. It’s been, what, months?” She doesn’t answer. “How many bullets do you have left for that little peashooter of yours?”

“I’ve got enough.” She shifts her pack by one of its straps. “And I really do have dynamite. Enough to blow a dozen raiders sky high.”

“And yourself too, while you’re at it,” Benny says with a sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. He can’t let that happen, can he? He looks at her, really looks, and sees a skinny little brat who’d lose a fight to a stiff wind. And she’s got a bandage where _he_ shot her, as if he doesn’t feel guilty enough. Jesus, he must be losing his damn mind. “Look, kid—don’t get the wrong idea or anything—but if you ask _real nice,_ I might consider helping you out.”

Her eyes narrow with undisguised suspicion. “Why?”

Benny throws his hands up in the air. “How the fuck should I know? I’m having a sudden crisis of conscience, cryin’ kids stab me right in the feelings, it’s heat stroke talkin’! What difference does it make?”

“What do you mean, ‘what difference does it make?’ You didn’t have a crisis of conscience when you stole my supplies! You didn’t have any ‘feelings’ when you _shot_ me! And you’re not that great in a fight, either, so I know it’s not just bloodlust making you want to kill raiders. What are you after, caps?” She stops, thinking. “Is that it? You want me to pay you? Because I can do that. They couldn’t have found where we buried our savings; only Mom and I knew where we put it. If you go with me and wipe them out, I can dig up the jar after the job is done.”

Huh. Now that’s what he calls askin’ nice. Never mind the please-and-thank-you, he’ll take solid payment any day.

“But if I do hire you, tubby,” she reaches over and pokes him in the middle a few times for emphasis, “that means you have to do what I say!”

“That depends on what you say. And on how much you’re paying.” He swats her hand away. “And if you stop calling me fat!”

She sticks her tongue out—he doesn’t have much hope that she’ll follow that particular rule—and then looks at him like she’s appraising cattle. “Three hundred caps, if you kill every single raider. Sound good?”

Three _hundred_? Well, hell, that farm must have been used for something other than just growin’ regular old vegetables. Maybe that’s why raiders took it over. “Deal.”

Satisfied with that, she spits on her palm and holds her hand out for him to shake.

“Is that how you make deals on the farm?” She doesn’t answer, just stares at him, still holding her hand out with expectation. He sighs, spits, and they shake on it. “That’s disgusting, kid.”

“Your face is disgusting.”

Benny glares at her and lets out a slow breath. This is gonna be a real long walk to the middle of nowhere, ain’t it?

“All right, kid. If you’re done? Time to move out.” He gives her ankle a little nudge with his foot when she doesn't hop to it. It's not really hard enough to be called a kick, but it gets her dander up.

“I have a name, you know.”

“Yeah, so do I, but I don't see you using it.”

“Old fartface,” she mutters.

Benny snickers a little. He hasn't heard that one in a while. He should probably take offense, but it's hard to feel like he has a Chairman's dignity, out here with this squeaky-voiced little hooligan.

“You probably don't even remember my name,” she shoots at him, struggling to get her pack settled over both shoulders. “That happens to old people. Stuff just falls right out of their heads.”

“Sure I remember. You're named after a gun. Pistol, right?” He laughs when she stamps her little foot in the sand.

“I ain't either named after a gun, and you know it.”

As funny as it is to get the little brat all riled up, if they stand around insulting each other all day, he'll never get rid of her, so Benny starts walking. Even at her pace, they should get out of the canyon in another hour or two, tops. He hears her stomping along behind him. Not so ghost-quiet now, is she?

“Tommy gun,” he says without looking around at her. “It's what gangsters used to shoot with. Omertas use 'em now, but you wouldn't want to be mixed up with _them_. They got no class.”

“Hmm. Sounds made up,” she says sullenly. “My mom got my name out of a book. And it _wasn't_ about gangsters.”

“If you say so, little britches.” He keeps walking, and the kid follows along behind him in silence for a while. With the shade of the canyon walls and the sun at just the right angle to be off their backs, it's a nice time to be out and about, but he still keeps an eye out for cazadores and the like. It'd be a shame to get stung to death, after all this.

“Where'd you get your name?” she asks after a while. She can't stop her chattering, now that she's lost her fear of him, even if it is more in the way of sniping at him than a friendly chat. He can't really blame her, knowing she's probably been on her own for six months or more, locked up in that vault or out in the wild. He's been starved for conversation himself, and he's only been alone a few days.

“I chose it myself,” he says with some pride. When they all had to throw off their tribal names and pick new ones from off of House's tapes, most of the others chose whatever sounded good, or something close to what they were called before. But Benny's name has meaning. He couldn't have picked a better one.

The kid snorts.

“Benny's a little kid's name.”

“Says you!” All the kids he's ever known, before they got up old enough to earn their own names, were called things like Stinky and Dumbass, to try to fool Old Death into thinking they weren't worth bothering with. He winces as he realizes for the first time that this is another tribal superstition that not everybody shares.

Damn. Every time he thinks he's rid himself of the old ways of thinking, something new comes up.

“A grownup would call himself Ben, or something,” the kid says, with a wry smirk.

“Oh, sure, and what does Ben mean? Nothing.”

“Who cares what a name _means_?”

“You ever play cards?” he asks. The change of subject makes her laugh.

“Yeah, Solitaire.”

Okay, Benny's never heard of that one, but he doesn't let on.

“Know what a trump card is?”

“Yeah,” she says, more seriously.

“Benny's what you call the highest trump.”

“Oh!” she says, almost admiringly. “The winning card.” Then she ruins the whole thing by laughing again. “How's that working out for you, scavver?”

Ouch. He slants a look at her, ready to point out that, even if he's a little down on his luck right now, he's still doing better than she is. But she looks so proud of herself for scoring a point on him, he doesn't have the heart to take her down a peg.

“The first thing you need to know about gambling, kid—maybe you lose a hand or two, it happens to everyone, but there’s no rule that says you have to fold before you’re ready.”

“I don’t need to know about gambling,” she says with her nose stuck up in the air. “ _I’m_ respectable.”

“Respectable? That’s just another word for boring.” It feels strange to say so, after all the work he’s put into civilizing himself, but it’s true.

“It’s not boring to be an honest farmer and work the land,” the kid insists. “My mom says it’s a noble profession.”

“Oh, yeah? Why’d she run off, then?”

He doesn’t see it coming when she thwacks her fist into his ribs. She may be scrawny, but she packs a punch. Benny’s glad of the scraps of armor he’s got between him and her, little kid or no.

“She didn’t run off!” the kid shrieks. She has lung power, too. “She’d have come back if she hadn’t got herself killed!”

“Okay, okay! I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.” Poking fun at her is one thing, but Benny’s not so coldhearted that he’d _deliberately_ make her burst into tears—which she looks like she’s about to do. Again.

She doesn’t, though. She sniffs, holding back the waterworks, and glares at him instead.

“How far is this farm of yours, anyway?” he asks, hoping to distract her on the off chance she’ll reconsider going on a crying jag.

“Halfway between here and Reno, I guess, and a bit to the east.”

Benny glances down at the Pip-Boy on his wrist to pull up a map. He shoves it under her nose and points at the little patch of desert where he was originally headed before he got waylaid by her and the raiders. The spot with the little town that ain’t Reno or Vegas, but also ain’t a bad place to stop for the night. “Around there?”

“Yeah.”

“We can make that before sundown if we hurry.” Or _he_ could. It might take a bit longer with her stumpy little legs slowing them down.

“Then pick up the pace, _Benny_.” She lengthens her strides and puts a bit of a bounce in her step, enough that she gets a little ahead of him.

“Can’t wait to get rid of me?”

“Nope!” she chirps, pack bumping her back rhythmically as she bounds away from him.

Benny smiles at her honesty and moves to catch up. “Me too, kid. Me too.”


	8. ...here's to those who drink their dinners...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *holds up swinging watch* It did not take me eight months to update. You are getting sleepy, sleeeeepy...
> 
> Advisories: violence (oh my, so much violence!) and the usual problematic language from our wastelanders who don't know any better.

She talks about the farm while they walk, telling him the lay of the land and what she recalls about the raiders. Most of what she remembers ain't too useful. They all had stupid hair, and the only one to get close to her had “breath like a hundred butts.” He ain’t sure if she means cigarettes or the other kind. Either way it’s not a lot of help, but he’ll keep it in mind.

If she could remember anything about their weapons or armor, it might give him an idea of who they’re dealing with. But it sounds like it was all generic leather and scavenged gear, so it’s probably one of those upstart raider gangs that are always springing up and dying out in the wasteland, not a real established tribe. That means shitty gear and not much training how to use it, and not much idea about teamwork, either. He should be able to lure some of them out and pick them off one by one without the others catching wise. The numbers might be more manageable, too, if he’s lucky.

Before long, they run out of things to say. So, they pass a few hours on the trail in silence. She complains when he changes the Pip-Boy radio station without consulting her, like she deserves a say, but otherwise they don’t chit-chat.

At twilight, when the sky starts to bruise purple, a cluster of shapes appears on the horizon. The town’s a small one, but there’s a general store and a place with rooms to rent. Benny has a handful of caps after a few days of scavenging, but it ain’t quite enough to pay on his own.

Without him having to ask, the kid throws some in to make up the difference. The lady at the counter hands them a room key, squinting at them behind bug-eye glasses. As they walk away, Benny tousles the kid’s hair to help the old biddy make up her mind about whether they're related or not.

The last thing he needs is somebody busting into their room, thinking they’re saving the brat from a slaver—or worse. If he’s going to save the farm single-handed tomorrow, he needs his beauty rest.

“You owe me ten caps,” Tommy says, once the door's locked tight behind them. She throws her pack on the stained mattress. “And I get the bed.”

“Oh, yeah? Says who?”

“Says the girl who hired you. You’re working for me, remember? Three hundred caps ring any bells? Well, two hundred and ninety, now.” She sits on the bed, spreading her arms and legs as far as she can to claim the whole space.

Benny sweeps an arm around her and scoops her up, pack and all. She squawks and tries to bite him, so he dumps her on the floor instead of setting her down gently like he meant to. Then he plops himself down on the bed, imitating her pose.

“Says _who_?” he asks again.

“You’re a bad father!”

“Good! You’re a bad daughter!”

That shuts her up. Benny flops back on the mattress, lacing his fingers behind his head, satisfied he's got one over on the brat.

He keeps feeling smug about it until he hears a sniffle. Then another one. He finally remembers that she _is_ somebody’s daughter, even if she ain’t his. And she’s got all these feelings about her dead mom that he keeps stomping on.

He sits up and looks at her. She’s sitting on the floor, clutching her teddy bear and frowning at him. Her big brown eyes look awful damp.

“Hey...bad joke. I didn’t mean it,” he says. Her expression doesn’t change.

“Don’t talk to me. You’re _mean_.”

Oh, Jesus. If she’s going to keep throwing guilt at him…

He rolls off the bed and motions for her to take her spot back.

“Go ahead—”

Like she’s spring-loaded, she bounds up off the floor and lands smack in the middle of the mattress.

“Thanks, Benny!”

He doesn’t miss the smirk she shoots in his direction. Goddamn, did she just play him? What a sap he’s turning out to be.

“You ain’t gettin’ those ten caps,” he says.

She snuggles down with her bear like she don’t even hear him.

Great. So Benny gets the floor. Well, he’s had worse.

* * *

He sleeps. Poorly, with a few interruptions whenever his back seizes up and he needs to move, but he sleeps. Morning finds him sore, but rested enough to maybe not die when things get dicey. The kid wakes up all bounce. He only hates her a little for it.

“How far from here to your place?” he asks, over their shared breakfast of trail mix and Nuka Cola.

“About an hour, I think.” She picks through and eats the Sugar Bombs, ignoring the healthier bits. “East from here.”

He thinks about that while eyeing her grubby fingers digging through the lunchbox. “You know, you’re gonna rot your teeth right out of your head, you keep eating like that.”

She sticks her tongue out at him, coated with cereal mush. Guh. Serves him right for trying to...do whatever he was trying to do. What does he care if she gums all her meals by the time she’s twenty?

“Are we really going this morning?” she asks when she’s done chewing. “Shouldn’t we stay here another night so we can surprise them when it’s dark?”

“You got the caps to pay for another night here, kid?”

“No,” she admits. “So what, you’re going to do it in the daytime? That’s dumb.”

Benny rolls his eyes at her. “Jesus, kid. Give me some credit, will you? We get close to the farm, find a place to sit tight and wait for sundown.”

“Wait? All _day_? Out in the desert?”

“Yeah. You got a better way to learn their movements? Figure out how many of ‘em there are?” She frowns and says nothing to that. “Didn’t think so.”

When they’re done with breakfast, and he’s made sure his weapons and ammo are all set, they head out.

They make good time as the kid starts to recognize the territory. She points out familiar landmarks on the way, which Benny doesn’t even pretend to be interested in, and gets them clean water from a hidden well, which he grudgingly admits is a help.

Finally, they come to what she says is the nearest neighbor, less than a mile out from her place.

The raiders have been here, too. The house she's been looking for is nothing but a hollowed out pile of burnt timber and ash. And bones.

The kid gets real shaky when she notices the skeletons. To Benny’s surprise, she grabs him by the hand and holds on tight.

“You afraid of a few skeletons?” Benny asks. He knows he’s being a shit, but he doesn’t expect the kid to look at him like he’s sucker-punched her.

“They were my _friends_.”

Benny tries to feel sympathetic about that, he really does. But tribals don’t get friends, not with any expectation they’ll survive for long, so all that comes out of his mouth is, “And you see where that gets ya?”

She thumps him in the arm with her fist, adding another bruise to an already sore body. “You’re—“ The kid flushes pink. “You’re an asshole!”

“But I ain’t wrong, kid. You’re new at this, so I’ll cut you a break, but it’s better you learn now.” Benny nods at the bones. “It don’t pay to get attached to anything out here. Nothin’ lasts. If you’re smart—and lucky—you’ll outlive more than what outlives you.”

“Fine, then. I hope I get to see _you_ die.”

“Now you’re gettin’ it.” He pats her on the head—she hates that—and strides on.

When she’s had her fill of being indignant, the kid scuttles after him. He slows down enough that she can get in front of him to lead the rest of the way.

“I can’t _wait_ to ditch you,” he hears her mutter. And he don’t even mind.

* * *

The farm don’t look like much...but what does Benny know about what a farm’s supposed to look like? There’s a field overgrown with weeds, big enough to be profitable but not so big a family of two can’t take care of it without hired help. Farther out from there is a farmhouse with two floors and most of the windows boarded up.

There’s a barn, too, knocked sideways by the wind and decay. It leans against the house like a drunk, threatening to collapse but in no real hurry to get there.

The best part is that the property’s ringed by rocky outcrops. Plenty of places to hunker down and keep watch. Now it’s a matter of deciding which one’s best.

“Well?” the kid says, crouching beside him.

“I’m thinkin’.”

They’ve stopped a ways down the road from the place, sheltering in the weeds behind a crooked mailbox. It’s had several names written on it and crossed out—the farm’s changed hands a few times over the centuries—but the last one, Chen, looks fresh. The paint's a few years old, at most.

“That you?” he asks, with a nod to the name.

The kid bristles. That’s all the answer he needs. “Why?”

“Just makin’ conversation.” Benny turns back toward the farm, studying the layout and thinking hard.

Tommy Chen. Maybe now that he’s got a full name for her, he can ask around these parts. See if he can track down somebody who gives a shit about the kid, some distant relatives or something. More likely she’s on her own, but it’s worth a shot.

Ah, hell. He shouldn’t be thinking that far ahead. They’ve got to survive the raiders first.

“All right, kid—“

“ _Tommy_.”

Benny pins her with a look and don’t dignify that tone with a response. “See those rocks?” He points at an outcrop with the best vantage point. “I’m going there. _You_ stay here.”

“No.”

“ _No?_ ”

“I’m coming with you.”

Benny snaps, “Like hell you are.”

She kicks his boot. “You’re right! Like hell I am! So you better get used to it!”

“No, you’re not!” He slams his fist against the mailbox for emphasis and knocks it near off its post.

Tommy flinches, then narrows her eyes at the damage. The box hangs from one corner and wobbles in the breeze. “That’s going to cost you another twenty caps.”

Benny cards his fingers through his hair and sighs. “Fine. That brings me down to...what, two sixty? You can shave off another fifty if you promise to sit here.”

She thinks about that. Looks out toward the rocks. “Fifty caps to sit here, while you walk out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says with a prim sniff. “Deal.”

Thank fuckin’ god.

Once he’s sure the kid’s hidden in the brush but good, Benny leaves her. He keeps low and edges, slow and easy, toward the outcrop. There’s enough cover between there and the road to make it safe enough, but he doesn’t take any chances he can’t afford to.

When he reaches the rocks, he drops down onto his belly behind ‘em and tucks himself into the best position he can find. Cozy enough to pass a few hours in, open enough that he can see the raiders, but not so open that the raiders can see him back.

He’s close enough to see the goings on at the farmhouse now. Though with so many windows blocked, it’s not ideal.

Off near the barn, he notices a brown lump he couldn’t see from the road. Some kind of animal is lying in the sun, tied to a water pump. Benny can’t be sure what it is from here, all matted and dirty, but the shape looks familiar. It’s almost like a dog, but if it is one, it’s bigger than any he’s ever seen before.

Other than the animal, there’s one raider leaning against the other side of the house, smoking. Another one sits on the front porch swing, looking like he’s liable to doze off. There’s not a lot of movement he can see through the windows, but that don’t mean anything. There might be a whole gang holed up in one of the boarded up rooms.

If two guards and a fat, lumpy bathmat is the typical set-up for these guys, he might have a fighting chance. He can sneak to the side of the farmhouse, put a sleeper hold on that one and slip a knife between his ribs pretty easy. The front porch might be trickier, but if that one falls asleep like he looks like he’s going to, Benny can surprise him. Drag his body off after.

Then it’s a matter of waiting for the shift change, and doing away with the next two before they figure out something’s amiss. He’s got enough ammo to dispose of ‘em pretty quick.

Once the bullets start flying, the ones in the house will know what’s up. But hell, that’s four guys down already. There can’t be too many more inside. The kid said there were six or so; he can take down two raiders in an enclosed space with his hands tied behind his back.

The dog—if it is a dog—might be an issue, though. If only he had something meaty to distract it with…

“Hey.”

Benny jumps. Draws his knife. Almost sticks it right into the kid.

“J—“ He lowers his voice because it wants to be a shout, “Jesus Christ, kid!”

She crouches near him and looks—well, a lot more composed than he would if their positions were reversed. Damn it, that means she’s starting to trust he won’t hurt her, even accidentally. She’s starting to _trust him_. He don’t need that shit in his life. Little girls, _trusting him_.

Benny puts the knife away, though he fights the urge to prick her to teach her a lesson about putting faith in bums like him. “What happened to staying put?”

“I honored our agreement. I stayed in the bushes while you came over here.” She burrows down into the gravel better. “But I never said anything about not following you.”

Damn it, she’s right, he fumes. “You’re—“

“Smarter than you?” Tommy smirks. “Yeah, I know. It’s not much of a trick.”

Maybe he should have poked her with the knife. Just a little. Just a scratch. It’d serve the pint sized smartass right. While he’s entertaining that idea, the door to the farmhouse opens up. The guards are changing? Benny sneaks a peek at his Pip-Boy and makes note of the time.

“If you’re so smart, where do you think we should hit ‘em first?” he asks when the raiders are all settled again, just to see what she’ll say.

“Hmm...” She studies the farmhouse, eyes darting back and forth as she takes in all the angles. Then she nods in satisfaction. “Smudge,” she says.

“Smudge?”

“The dog. He belonged to the people up the road.”

“They named him _Smudge_?”

“It’s all he leaves behind. When he jumps on folks, I mean. Squashes them flat. Mom and I used to—” Tommy cuts off the thought, aware she’s sharing too much. “Never mind. I say we untie him and set him on the raiders, and then you can shoot them while they’re distracted.”

“Huh.” It’s a plan. Not a great plan, but it is a plan. It ain't something he'd have come up with at her age, but it shows promise. “This dog, is he vicious?”

“No, not at all. He’s a big sweet dumb-dumb. He wouldn’t bite anyone if his life depended on it. But look at the size of him—even if he doesn’t crush one of them trying to get a hug, he’ll knock them over.”

Benny glances back at the sad, ugly lump, and gives it a proper once over. It’s more knotted fur than dog, if his guess is right. “That’s assuming the raiders ain’t been tryin’ to make him mean. Beatin’ him, starvin’ him...”

The kid’s face crumples into an expression of worry. “They would do that, wouldn’t they. Poor old stupid Smudge.”

Oh, good. She feels sorry for the mangy beast. Which means she’ll expect Benny to rescue it.

Maybe he can charge her extra for that. It might cancel out the caps she keeps shaving off his fee.

For a minute or two, Benny turns her idea over in his head. The dog is an unpredictable factor in his plan and in hers. He doesn’t like that; a variable the size of that mutt can make even the best idea go sideways real quick. But what can he do?

“You got any CRAM left?”

“You mean the canned crap you left behind when you stole from me? Yeah. I’ve got it.”

“Good,” Benny says before he can talk himself out of the idea. “I’m thinkin’ I go sneak up on the guards and take ‘em out, one at a time. If you can get to the dog and keep him busy—keep him _quiet—_ it’ll go a lot easier.”

She’s started to gnaw on one of her thumbnails, but he can’t tell if it’s nerves or thoughtfulness. “Then what?”

“Then, we wait. The next two goons come out to trade shifts, I clock one, you set Fido on the other—”

“Smudge.”

“Smudge. Fine. Whatever. You’re drivin’ me nuts here, kid.” Benny sighs. “That leaves a couple in the house. That’s a hell of a lot less stupid than walking up to half a dozen of ‘em and hopin’ that fleabag crushes one.”

“I guess.”

“Is there any way you can get to the water pump while stayin’ out of sight?”

“Not right now. But when the sun starts going down...” She points to some of the other rocky places between here and the barn. They’re bright as anything, but when sun shifts, there’ll be plenty of shady spots to slink between. Nothing someone his size could get away with, but for this ghost? Piece of cake.

Benny pats her on the arm, careful of her bandage. All right. If nothing goes wrong from now ‘til sunset, they’ve got a plan.

* * *

The hours unspool toward nightfall, and the forced silence don’t help ‘em go any faster. The kid snacks on trail mix and nods off in the afternoon, slumping against him and snoring softly. Benny cracks open a can of CRAM and stuffs his face when his stomach won’t stop complaining about being empty. When he’s done, he wipes his greasy fingers on his vault suit, but it never quite comes off. The jelly they pack that stuff in really lingers.

Finally, darkness starts setting in. By then, the kid’s awake again and anxious to get on with things. Benny can’t say he doesn’t feel the same, but he doubts her eagerness could survive knowing the odds of walkin' away from this in one piece. His chances are better—he can turn and run if she gets grabbed—but four to one it’ll be curtains for her. Unless she’s as good as she thinks she is, in which case he’s generous enough to give her a fifty-fifty shot.

He gives her the go-ahead when the shadows get thick. Without so much as a goodbye, she’s off into the dark.

A couple of times, he loses sight of her. It’s unnerving to feel himself worry about the brat, but her going invisible is a good sign. If he can’t see her, they can’t either.

Benny catches a glimpse of her at the rocks nearest the barn, and she gives a little wave. That’s the signal.

After a minute to firm up his nerves, Benny steals out of his hidey-hole. He circles to the side of the house where a guard stands—a different one from this morning, they’ve already swapped out twice—and sets their plan in motion.

It’s beautiful how the first phase goes down. Pretty as a fuckin' picture. A sleeper hold, a slit throat; another sleeper hold, a knife in the ribs. Benny drags the second guard’s body away from the porch and dumps it with the first. He signals the kid, who by now has wedged herself between the barn and house to keep their furry friend occupied. The dog can see her, though nobody else could, and she tosses it another piece of potted meat. As it chows down, she makes for the rope tied around its neck.

Benny takes his place around the corner from the front door—invisible from every step of the porch but the last. He slides the rifle from his back—makes sure it’s not loaded so it won’t misfire in his face—and holds it by the stock and barrel with the butt pointed skyward. A quick jab and he’ll clip whoever comes out of the house right under the chin.

Benny checks his Pip-Boy. From watching them all day, he knows the guards are on four hour shifts, give or take a few minutes. All they have to do is wait, and not for much longer.

After awhile, the door creaks open, and a shaft of light spills out onto the porch.

“Where the fuck is Jules? Fuckin’ shit-ass, off getting high again...”

One of the two raiders throws himself into the empty porch swing. The other stomps down the steps, loud enough to cover the distant _ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump_ that’s either a herd of bighorners or that damn dog running toward them.

The raider freezes on the bottom step, staring at the shape crouched at his feet. Before he can make sense of what he’s seeing, Benny pops the gun up. The raider buckles in near-silence, and Benny’s knife finishes the job.

_Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump..._

The one in the swing half-turns toward Benny, but night’s falling fast and his eyes haven’t adjusted from the lamplight inside. No matter how he squints, all he can see is shadows.

“That you out there, Jules? Rocko?” He leans over the railing, almost far enough for Benny to grab him and pull him down. “Ruffles?”

“ **ROOF**!” The dog comes flying out of the darkness.

And a couple hundred pounds of slobber and claws plows right into _Benny_ , pinning him against the wall.

“Shit!” Benny hears the raider scramble back on the porch, but it’s hard to focus over the press of animal and the _stench_. Somebody is in desperate need of a bath, and for once it ain't Benny. “The dog’s loose! Nos, fucking—shit! He’s loose! Come get your fuckin’ dog!”

The good news is, the raider didn’t see Benny over Smudge. The bad news is he’s gonna get crushed to death. Or suffocated by doggy breath. His eyes start to water.

The mutt shoves its nose into Benny’s eye, whuffing happily—at least, Benny thinks that’s a happy sound—and starts licking all over his mouth. Ugh, it’s slimy. It’s sliming him!

“Mmph—rrgh—nngh—off—” He grabs whatever bits of fur he can find and tries to shove it away, but that just gets it more excited. Teeth scrape across his chin but before he has time to realize it’s too dumb to bite down, it lunges up, plants both paws on his chest, and flattens him.

All of a sudden, there are two noises: the pop top of a can of CRAM and the farmhouse door slamming open.

The dog jumps away from Benny and lumbers the direction of the kid and the offered treat. He's left addled and disoriented, scrambling to clear his eyes and get his rifle before he loses the element of surprise.

He ain’t got time to worry about holding the gun right. It’s not loaded, there’s no time to load it, and there’s two sets of boots coming. His trusty repeater is a club now; when he catches sight of leather armor and a scarred face, he hefts it like one.

 _CRACK._ One of the raiders goes down. Benny takes another swing to make sure he ain’t gettin’ back up. The second one pulls a pistol, but Benny knocks it out of his hand before he can squeeze off a shot. If it wasn’t before, the repeater’s good and busted now. It hangs, bent at the middle, useless in his hands. Benny throws it aside and pulls his knife.

It’s been a long time since he’s had to bet his life on his skill at hand-to-hand, but once upon a time he was the best in his tribe. Well, one of the best. Top five, anyhow.

His reflexes are slower these days, but he’s still good enough to avoid a lunge from a man who relies on strength over skill. The raider’s knife is bigger than his, but it’s got nicks in the blade, and flecks of either rust or old blood. Looks like a dull edge, but this raider’s probably strong enough to butcher a brahmin with a butter knife. Sharpness won’t matter if Benny lets one of his wild swings connect.

So he doesn’t. Benny dodges, weaves, doubles back. Repeats the pattern three or four times. When the raider’s staggering from overextended himself, Benny slips behind him and raps him on the back of the skull with the knife hilt. While he’s still seeing stars, Benny cuts his throat.

And _fuck_ he’s out of breath now. Didn’t this used to be a lot easier? He wants to bend over and gasp until he passes out, but he hears the kid running up behind him, so he straightens up.

“Where’s—“ He tries to talk, but half the sentence gets lost on a wheeze. Christ, he’s got to give up smoking for real, not just when he’s out of cigarettes. “—dog?”

Tommy’s silent but it ain’t because she’s out of breath. The kid comes up short and stares at the blood turning whole stretches of his vault suit purple. She talks a tough game, but it’s obvious she ain’t never seen a man’s throat cut before. Benny’s almost sorry for doing it in front of her, but fuck it. She’s got to learn sometime.

Still staring, she thrusts her arm out and points toward the barn. Five empty CRAM tins lie in the dust. The kid really went above and beyond. Smudge is happy as a radroach in a Fancy Lad factory.

“You—stay with the mutt,” he tells her. “Try not to let it sit on you. I’ll check the house.” Unless the gang’s been adding members since the kid last saw them, there shouldn’t be more than one or two left. He picks up the raider’s revolver, since his repeater is a lost cause, and checks to make sure it’s loaded. Six shots. He can make them count.

“Smudge won’t jump on me. _I_ haven’t been eating stinky meat.” Her voice is trembling, but if she’s scared, there ain’t much he can do about it. He gives her a push toward the barn.

“Stay low.”

Still dazed, Tommy stumbles toward the water pump. He thinks that’s the end of it, but when he goes to mount the stairs, she says, “Don’t—don’t die.”

Benny’s almost touched by her concern. “You worried about me, kid?”

That snaps her out of it enough to earn a glower. “I’m worried about my farm.”

If he weren’t so beat, he’d smile. Instead, he shakes his head and goes for the door.

Inside the farmhouse, he finds still air and dust and the smell of low burning candles. Otherwise, the raiders have left a pretty light footprint on the house. The entryway is stuffy and hot—and blessedly empty.

Beside the door is a staircase, the kind that turns on a landing and keeps heading up; on the opposite wall, a doorway without a door. Benny ducks under the stairs and listens, deciding on what to do next.

The only signs of life are the clink of bottles coming from the doorway—must be the kitchen—and some shuffling upstairs. He tries to focus. Seems like...pacing? Yeah. The pattern is clear enough, from one end of a hallway to the other.

Okay. Sounds like there’s one in front of him and one above, which brings the raiders’ numbers up to seven. That’s as many as she said there’d be, ain’t it? Observant little scout, that kid, even when the heat is on. If she weren’t such a pest he might think about keeping her around.

The footsteps get loud—right at the stairs—then turn and head back. He waits for them to go soft and cuts across the entryway to the kitchen to peek inside.

Boy, getting bowled over by a dog notwithstanding, Lady Luck is on his side today. The raider is knockin’ around inside an old metal refrigerator, looking for something. Which means he ain’t aware of anything goin’ on behind him.

Benny sneaks up and pistol whips him hard enough to knock him down. Then he slams the fridge door on the guy’s face a few times for good measure.

When the raider’s head is good and dented, Benny tugs the body out of view. There’s a back door leading out of the kitchen, which means simple clean-up, but there’s no time now. He’ll have to take care of proper disposal later. There’s still one raider to go before he can breathe easy.

Benny glues himself to the wall beside the doorway and strains to hear the pacing. It ain’t so easy all the way over here, but if he listens close—there. Step. Step.

Far away. Closer. Closer. Landing. Farther. Farther.

He sticks his head in the doorway to check for danger... And sees the kid staring back at him from his original hiding place. Benny flails at her, waving for her to get back under the stairs. He pops out of the doorway just in time for the pacing to reach the landing again.

The footfalls pause. The silence stretches longer than Benny likes, long enough for his heartbeat to pick up. But the raider snorts and spits, and the pacing starts up again.

Is his heart going to explode? Benny clutches his chest and breathes in. Fuck’s sake, he's getting too old for this shit.

There’s only one way to surprise the one upstairs—go halfway up and hide at the turn before the landing. On the raider’s next circuit, when Benny's sure he's farthest from the stairs, he creeps out and presses himself against the banister.

Again, he holds his breath and waits. The steps come closer, closer, pause. Farther, farther. He puts a foot on one of the stairs, another, a third. He goes to put his foot on the fourth, just as the raider reaches the top of the stairs.

And the piece of shit wood _creaks._ Fuck!

Time speeds up. He ain’t got time to think, just react. Benny peels away from the stairs and takes cover behind the railing, but he ain’t quick enough to dodge the first bullet. It nails him in the side, thankfully where the armor’s thickest, but it hurts like a son of a bitch.

Light explodes shutter-fast from the barrel of the raider’s gun. It’s a fucking automatic! He’s got a fucking automatic?! The burst of shots flicker in the confined space like a thunderstorm in the night sky.

Shit! Fuck! Benny can’t lean around the landing to take a shot without getting his head blown off! And he’s shot too, yet? What’s he supposed to do?!

Benny slams his fist on the wood and does the only thing he can. He sticks his pistol between the railing slats, angles himself so he can kind of see, and fires.

The first bullet misses. The second and third, too, god damn it. Four and five make holes in the raider's chest, the kind a guy can survive with the right mindset. But six is the one that matters. Six gets him in the neck.

The raider wobbles and drops his weapon. He claws at his throat, trying to stop the fountain of blood, but it’s useless. Red gushes through his fingers while he gurgles, stumbles and falls. He slides down the steps almost comically on his face—bump, bump, bump—and stops with a sickly squelchy sound on the landing.

Benny watches through the slats. Waits. Listens for the death rattle. When it’s over, he approaches the body.

Something like a laugh—a relieved _heh—_ pops out of Benny and into the quiet. “Still got it.”

He takes the time to find some bullets in his pack and reload the loaner pistol. With that done, he makes his way up the last few stairs, glances down the hallway, and ain’t surprised to find it empty. If there were any others, they’d have come running by now. He heads back down.

“Well, that’s that, then,” Benny says, kicking the last raider’s body down the stairs. “Farm’s all yours, kid.”

The kid pops her head out of the kitchen—which ain’t where he left her. Damn, he’s really not sure she can’t walk through walls or something.

“You got ‘em all?” she asks. “You’re _sure_?”

“Sure, I’m sure. If there were any more in the house, we’d know it. Most raiders ain’t subtle enough to be lying in wait.”

“Most,” she repeats. She still looks scared, but Benny figures she’s holding up okay for a little kid who ain’t used to all this blood and death.

He makes his way down the stairs to her, moving a little more careful now that the heat of battle’s passed and he’s starting to feel his bruises. He really is getting old and soft.

The kid watches him leaning on the railing with a troubled frown.

“Did you get shot?”

“A little,” he admits.

“I thought you said you could handle this!”

“Look around,” he says, with a wave of his arm that he instantly regrets. “Do you see any raiders hanging around? No? Then I guess I handled it!” He comes to a stop on the ground floor, right in front of her. It’s hard to miss that the poor kid is shaking like ripples on water. He tries to make himself more gentle, but that’s unfamiliar territory. He’s got no practice at it. He can be tender and he can be sweet, he always treats a lady right right even outside the bedroom, but what does he know about kids? “ _You_ don’t have a scratch on you,” he says. “I call that a job well done.”

“But—but—if you bleed to death and mess up my floor, I can never have company over,” she blurts.

“The floor’s a lost cause already,” Benny says dryly. Then he turns and shows her the bullet that’s still lodged in the armor at his side. “I’m not bleeding, to death or otherwise. It cracked a rib, that’s all.”

“Oh, good.” She straightens up, scowling. “So you won’t be laid up here, making more work for me. We can say goodbye right now.”

“Aw, so that’s how it is?” He ducks his head and gives her a real hangdog look. It’s hard to keep it up when all he wants to do is laugh at her. Though if he laughs for real, the cracked rib might become a broken one. “After everything we’ve been through together, you’d turn me out into the cold and the dark, all alone?”

“Yep,” she says firmly. “And I’m taking off another fifty caps for the mess.”

“You’re a hard one, kid.” He drops the sad sack routine, his mind already turning to Reno and everything he can get done there without a tagalong kid in tow. If he pushes himself, he can be there before the next sunset. “You’ll want to take care of those bodies before they start to stink up the place.”

“Hey, wait!” She looks surprised, and he wonders for a minute if she’s expecting him to stick around. He’s paid her back for stealing her crap, and she has her home back. Their business is done.

“You want me to drag ‘em outside for ya?” he asks.

“No, I just—are you _sure_ you got all of ‘em?”

“I'll check the house if it'll make you feel better,” Benny sighs. This kid's a real pain in the keister. But maybe he does owe it to her to make sure there are no stragglers to come back for revenge.

“Check _everywhere_ ,” she insists.

“Yeah, yeah. Can I assume the kitchen is as clear as I left it?”

“Nothing in there but beer and whiskey.” She scrunches up her face in disgust. “You can take as much of _that_ as you want.”

Well, she might appreciate a stiff drink when she's a little older, but for now he'll be happy to take it off her hands.

He leads the way into the big room, the parlor or sitting place or whatever they call it. The lobby? Anyway, there's not a stick of furniture left intact. It's all been converted into makeshift bedding, and the leftovers tossed into the corner. At least that means there's nothing to hide behind.

“What's that over there?” he asks, motioning to the two doors on the other side of the room.

“One's a bathroom. The other one used to be Grandma's room. I used it for storage after she died.”

“Bathroom? You have running water in this place?”

“Yeah, but it's hot. The only clean water comes from the well out back. I hope they all drank from the sink and got radiation poisoning,” she adds savagely.

“I’m sure some of ‘em did.” He wonders if he should say anything about her dead grandma. He knows what it’s like to have people and lose them, but what grandparents are for, he couldn’t say.

They creep across the room—he knows she’s on his heels only because he looks back over his shoulder after he starts to move. She may be a pain, but at least she’s not a liability.

He flings open the first door, gun at the ready, but there’s no one there. Just a whole lot of chems, scattered across the toilet and the sink, and a bathtub full of guns. He’ll have to pick through that before he goes.

Grandma’s room is full of boxes, all of ‘em pried open and rifled through. There’s an intact bedframe, but the mattress has been carried out and used for who knows what. No raiders here, either.

“So far, so good,” he says. “What’s upstairs?”

“My room, Mom’s room, bathroom, and a closet.”

“ _Two_ bathrooms?” Farming must be a better line of work than he thought.

“It’s a pre-war house. Those people were way too spoiled to go all the way downstairs if they had to pee in the middle of the night,” she says, like she hasn’t lived with that same kind of convenience all her life. Benny spares a moment, again, to think of his room back at the Tops, and his own private bathroom where there were never any radscorpions waiting for him in the dark. Radroaches, occasionally, but he can handle those half-asleep and unarmed.

Going back up the stairs takes some effort, but he makes it. He’s so looking forward to being able to lay himself down in a real bed. And he hopes to find one on Virgin Street. It’s been a good ten years since he’s paid a visit to the Cat’s Paw, but if those two little blondes he remembers are still working there, it’d sure be nice to get to know them again.

He turns left at the top of the stairs, and finds that somebody’s been having a party in Mom’s nice big bed. The furniture here is broken, too, and there’s not a single surface that’s not covered in used syringes, empty liquor bottles, or vomit. But no raiders, not even one passed out in the corner, sleeping off an overdose.

“Starting to feel silly yet?” he asks the kid.

“There’s two rooms left. _And_ a closet.”

He finds the closet, which wouldn’t be big enough to hold a full-grown raider even if it wasn’t stuffed full of old cans, bones, and scraps of half-rotted meat. Looks like these dead assholes were too lazy to dump their trash outside. Probably planning to move on soon, but he doesn’t tell the kid that. She might start to feel bad for killing them if she realizes she could have just waited them out. Besides, they might have just burned the house down out of pure spite when they were ready to clear out.

“You’re gonna have a time cleaning all this up,” he says as he shuts the closet door. The kid looks furious, but she just points at the next one.

“The bathroom!”

“Okay, you’re the boss.”

He opens the door. This bathroom is a little cleaner than the one downstairs, only a few hits of psycho by the broken sink (probably broken because of a few hits of psycho) and a bucket of mutfruit off in the corner. There’s even a pretty-looking curtain still hanging around the tub

The kid presses up against his back all of a sudden.

“The shower curtain moved!” she whispers.

“No, it didn’t.”

“Yes, it _did_! There’s somebody in there!”

She’s obviously just imagining things. He’ll humor her, though, because he knows she’s scared. But when he looks down and sees she has her pistol out, he stops.

“You put that thing away before you hurt someone.” And when she starts to stick her bottom lip out in a pout, he adds, “If you shoot _me_ , I’m shooting back.”

She puts it away, but she’s not happy about it. Well, he’d rather have the kid mad at him than take a bullet in the back.

He takes another look at the curtain. Is it moving, just a little? No, that’s ridiculous. She’s starting to get to him, that’s all.

He reaches out and gets a good grip on the edge. If there is anything in this bathtub, he’ll blows its head clean off.

He whips the curtain aside. The kid yelps and drops to the floor.

Benny lets his gun drop, laughing. Of course there’s no one there, but now he knows what the mutfruit is for. The raiders have been brewing bathtub gin.

“You can get up, kid. This stuff’ll make you go blind if you drink it, but it can’t do anything to you from all the way over there.”

“Why would you drink something out of the bathtub?” she asks suspiciously.

Benny could answer that, but she's already a one-woman Temperance Society. If she doesn't know what this is already, she doesn't need to know.

“Let's go take a look at your room, so I can get out of here. So you can throw me out, I mean,” he suggests. She looks a little downcast when he says that, and he feels a twinge of...guilt? Does he feel bad for leaving her all alone out here? That's ridiculous. This is _her_ home. And she's a hell of a lot better off than most kids her age who have to make their own way in the Mojave.

“Better get moving,” the kid says grimly. She does stick close to him as they walk over to open the last of the doors, but Benny can't see the need to be on high alert. He doesn't even bother with stealth.

He looks in on what he would have known, even without being told, used to be a kid's room. There's a little bed, miraculously still standing, with a mattress still on it and a ratty pink blanket trailing down to the floor. A shelf full of books and trinkets used to stand in the corner, but it's smashed all to pieces now, all her pretty things broken and the loose pages of the books scattered across the floor. There's pictures pasted up on the walls, of things that look like rats, except cute and tidy-looking, standing up like people in real old-timey clothes.

“I can't believe they left all that baby stuff up on the walls,” the kid whispers.

“Probably would have been too much work to tear it all down. Are you satisfied now?”

It takes her a minute to stop looking around the room like it's fixing to get up and slap her in the face, but when she does, she glares at him.

“Satisfied? You—you didn't look under the bed.”

“Are you kidding?” She can't be serious. “Do you see how low that bed sits? _You_ couldn't hide under there. What kind of a raider do you expect me to find?”

“A skinny one!”

“Kid,” he says flatly. Her face collapses like she wants to cry.

“Come on, just look!”

“There are no raiders under the bed!”

“My mom always used to check under the bed,” she says stubbornly.

“Do I look like your mom? No, don't answer that, I can already see you want to hurt my feelings. Just...wait there.” He gets down on his hands and knees and sticks his head under the blanket. The bed's not quite as low as it looks, so he crawls a little way under it, poking the pistol into the darkness just to show her that she's safe. “You see, there's no—” Eyes in the dark!

He fires off a shot just as a knife flashes out and slices across the back of his hand. The sound startles a scream out of the kid, but he has no time to worry about her. His whole arm goes numb almost at the first touch of the blade, and he feels the swelling coming on in a matter of seconds. Goddamn tribal poison, is what this is. He loses his grip on his gun, and knows he already lacks the coordination to pick it up again, much less fire it.

“Shoot him, kid, shoot him!” he gasps as he tries to scramble out from under the bed. His breath is already starting to come in a harsh wheeze as his throat starts to close up. That'd be cazador venom at work; it's a favorite ingredient for poisoners.

He has a single dose of cazador antivenom in his pack, but he's a hell of a long way from being able to get it. The raider strikes like a coiled snake before Benny has time to do much more than roll onto his side, catching him by the arm in a grip Benny no longer has the strength to break.

The knife is so sharp, he doesn't feel it slide between his ribs. For a second, he just feels like he's been punched in the side, right at the spot where his armor gaps wide open to leave a big, juicy target. But he ain’t got time to worry about it. The world loses focus, fizzles and goes black.

* * *

Time runs backwards. He’s in the Legion camp, beat all to hell and then some, knowing he’s dead, just waiting for it to catch up to him. Only, he wonders what’s taking so long.

And then there she is, that nutty broad who acts like she wants him dead while she makes soft promises with her eyes. That courier. His Pussycat. The one who sent him off into the sunset instead of giving him what he deserved.

She stares down at him, but doesn’t make a move. Huh. Benny figures he’s having one of them death’s doorstep-type hallucinations. But if he’s making this up out of his own head, shouldn’t she be...doing something?

A slow, careful blink does a little to clear his head. A couple of deep breaths do a little more, and he starts to feel like a real jackass when he realizes he’s making eyes at a photograph.

Objectively, it’s no Miss Schwartz. She’s standing there all self-conscious like she wants to ask if she’s doing it right, and the photographer—who she must have paid good caps for this ‘cause it’s a studio shot—didn’t even get her in focus. The film is spotted with radiation damage, and the raiders have gone at it with a pen, making some very unnecessary additions to her figure. There’s no call for any of that, but like he said to the kid, raiders don’t much go for subtlety.

The kid? Benny blinks again. The _kid_. He’s lying in her bed, _not_ dying of cazador venom, staring at a picture of _the goddamn courier_ , the Wasteland legend in a faded gingham dress with her hair in curls and a baby in her lap. The picture’s pasted up on the ceiling alongside an “I LOVE YOU” note, where a kid with a mother who was gone a lot might keep it. Fate’s got a twisted sense of humor.

He tries to sit up, but it’s a wasted effort. He’s still puffed up with venom, not so much that he’s in any trouble, but enough that it hurts something fierce if he tries to do much more than just lie there. His one attempt drags a pained grunt out of him. An answering sniffle comes from somewhere behind him. Well, at least he knows where the kid is.

“What the fuck is going on around here?” he groans.

The bed dips a little as she crawls up beside him.

“I _told_ you there was a raider under the bed!”

Great, and now he’s never gonna hear the end of that.

“He dead?” he asks, hoping real hard that he ain’t scheduled for another fight in the next thirty seconds.

“Yeah, you winged him, and I got him six more times. And—you, once.” Her fingertips brush over his hair as she says that, and, oh, he can just imagine.

“You shot me in the _head_?”

“It ricocheted! You were barely even bleeding. Honestly, I was _much_ more worried about the poison, but our brahmin used to get stung by cazadores all the time, so I dosed you just like I would her, and it _worked_ , so—don’t be mad, okay?”

He turns his head enough to get a good look at her. She’s gone blotchy from crying, and she seems afraid to look him in the eye. He’d try to look reassuring, but his face won’t do that right now.

“I’m not mad,” he says. It’s almost funny, in a way. Now he and Pussycat have something else in common. “Kid, I have to ask—what was it you said your mom did for a living?”

“She was a _farmer,”_ the kid says in a tone that comes up just short of calling him a goddamn moron. “Hence, _the farm_.”

“I meant during the off season,” he says patiently. This ain’t the kind of thing he ought to blunder into by losing his temper.

“Oh.” She sniffs hard. “She delivered the mail.”

Well, shit. That sounds like a courier, all right.

“Where?”

“All over. Her last letter said if I needed her, I could write to the Mojave Express office in Primm, but I never did. _Why_? Why are you so interested in my mom?”

There’s a lot of ways Benny could answer that, but even he knows enough about kids to figure she don’t need the details.

He’s got the strength to lift his hand, so he points at the photograph. Even though he already knows the answer, he asks, “That her?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen her.” And he sure hopes she don’t ask why or how. “Couple weeks back.”

Tommy goes ashen and shakes her head. “That’s not possible. She’s been gone for months.”

“I’m tellin’ you she’s alive, kid.”

“Shut up!” She blinks back new tears. Ah, crap. How many times is he going to make this kid turn on the waterworks? “If she was alive, she’d have come back for me!”

“Maybe she did. Maybe, she got—” he forces his expression to stay neutral, “—delayed. On that job of hers. And by the time she got back...”

Benny watches her face while she puts the pieces together. It’s like guilt twisting a knife inside him and that’s an unfamiliar feeling. He is not a fan.

“The raiders,” the kid whispers and the tears slip free. “She must think I’m dead. Where was she? Where did you see her?”

“Here and there,” Benny hedges. What’s he gonna do, tell her the last place he saw her was in a Legion den? She’ll go get herself killed that way.

The kid punches him in the side, near where the bullet hit but not close enough to break the bone. “Where!”

“Vegas! Okay? Jesus,” he whines, “I was at death’s door not ten minutes ago. Be gentle.”

Tommy scrubs her cheeks and jumps to her feet. “Take me.”

“What?”

“Take me to Vegas. Take me where you saw her.”

“Kid, even if I was in any shape to—”

She raises her fist again. “Take me or that rib is going to be more than cracked! And—and you’ll never see that hundred and sixty caps! And I’ll shoot you again! Only this time I’ll mean it!”

“All right! Simmer down.” He winces. It ain’t that he’s afraid of her, it’s...well, he don’t like the guilt that’s started chewing him up inside. She’s no longer some random wasteland orphan, she’s _his_ orphan. He made her one. If anything, he should count himself lucky he can undo it. “I’ll take you to Vegas, just not yet.”

“But—!!“

“Kid— _Tommy._ I’ve gotta heal from the last favor I did you.”

Her face screws up. “Fine. Twelve hours.”

“Two days. At least.”

She glares. “That’s another ten caps, then. And ten more caps for every day after those!”

“For—all right.” Benny sighs. There’s no point fighting it. “Deal.”


End file.
